I’m not a native speaker, but as far as I understood, for singular objects and animals “it” was used. Why use “they” for individual people then?
In: 1400
There’s a concept in linguistics called animacy, where nouns indicate whether the subject is animate, inanimate, or somewhere in between. Humans and things we anthropomorphize, like our gods, our pets, etc., are described with the highest degree of animacy the language has. Chairs, rocks, dishware, and other non-living objects are generally assigned the one of the lowest degrees of animacy. The absolute lowest degree usually goes to abstract nouns, like emotions or concepts. Plants, animals, microbes, dehumanized people groups machines, celestial objects, etc., all fall along a spectrum, in different places on the spectrum in different languages, and there are exceptions to all of this. For example, in the Navajo language, the highest tier of animacy is reserved for adult humans… and lightning. If you were raised speaking English or any other European language, that probably makes little or no sense. Just gotta shrug that one off as different strokes.
In English, there aren’t many words with a distinction of animacy. Mostly, it’s just he/she, it, they, who, whom, and what. It and what have a very low degree of animacy, and should rarely, if ever, be used to refer to people. If you use “what” to refer to a person, it actually changes the meaning of the sentence. “Who are you?” asks their personal identity. “What are you?” asks about their physical or immutable description. The latter is also generally seen as rude. “It,” on the other hand, is not applicable to people at all, unless that person has explicitly asked to be referred to that way. The word implies that the subject is an inanimate object.
The issue of “they” being plural is irrelevant. It’s grammatically plural, but it’s been used to refer to single people for over 500 years. And it’s not even the only pronoun to get this treatment. “You” is also grammatically plural, and referred specifically to multiple people until just a few centuries ago, when “thou,” the singular form, fell out of common use. And like the singular they, the singular you kept its plural grammar, including conjugations. If you see or hear archaic English that uses “thou,” you’ll also see that verbs with “thou” as a subject are conjugated oddly. The Bible is a great example – “thou shalt not” is used several times. Using the modern singular you, that would be “you shall not,” using the plural conjugation. It’s sort of like how the Spanish usted uses plural conjugations, even though it’s singular and the plural is ustedes.
Because that is just how the language always worked.
“a customer was looking for you” “oh, where did they go?”
As you see, if you look at normal parlance, we always used ‘they’ for persons of which we don’t know the gender yet.
This whole idea that this is a new thing is just not true.
Edit apparently my comment was auto removed by a bot because
“Sin begins when you treat a person as a thing”
Wasn’t descriptive enough.
I think thebbot just hates Terry prachett.
Anyways
Bigots love to dehumanizing and reduce people they don’t like to an object.
People have used “it” to refer to transgender people because they hate them and want other people to not think of them as human.
”We had a party last night, while cleaning up, i have found a lost cell phone. I hope they call so i figure out who it is.”
We use they often, to represent a singular person without realizing it.
I am a teacher of English as a foreign language and after YEARS of trying to get people to get their grammar correctly, I can’t even begin to describe how much this irks me. If they want a neutral pronoun that doesn’t also mean “table”, I’m all for Te, or Ti or Ir, or whatever they want. But “they are” for a singular is… Urgh.
Just a separate, but related note to this.
There is a common incorrect history that gets put forward whenever the topic of “they” as a singular pronoun comes up.
It goes like this: “the word ‘they’ has been used as a singular pronoun for six hundred years! Chaucer and Shakespeare used it as a singular. ‘They’ has always been singular.”
This narrative ignores the fact that from the 18th century to the early 21st century, there was a distinct effort to only use “they” as a plural form. I’m not saying that this is the best usage of the word, but this is how the word was used and this was how it was taught in English classes. English naturally evolves. It evolved past the use of the singular “they” and now, it has reverted back to this usage.
This is not a comment on the modern use of “they.” “They” is considered an inclusive way to refer to individuals across the gender spectrum in the singular form, and I agree with its modern usage 100%. But the narrative I described in my second paragraph is often used to make people who learned English in the 20th century feel like they’ve been incorrect their entire lives. They were not incorrect. The meaning has reverted back to an older usage of the word.
I have a question. If using “they” in a singular manner, referring to a single person, would it be appropriate to say:
“They is going to the store”
Or
“They are going to the store.”
I’m genuinely unsure.
“It” is an object. “They” are a person. That’s really all there is to it.
Bonus fun fact! Singular “they” is older than singular “you” by a couple of centuries. “You” used to be strictly plural – that”s why it always takes the plural form of the verb “to be”, “are”.
**This response doesn’t explain why “they” is the appropriate usage, but it explains why “it” is inappropriate.**
English is a language that sees humans as more worthy of animacy than pretty much everything else. Literally, there are humans, and then the rest of the universe is separate. (English is not, by any means, the only language to do this, as humans have a tendency to place ourselves at the top of the ladder of importance. We will, however, gift this animacy and respect to other living beings that we’ve deemed worthy, such as pets or that which we revere, for one reason or another.) That said, using “it” to describe a tree is perfectly fine, despite its being very much alive and interactive with its environment, but using “it” to describe one’s grandma is seen as absolutely ridiculous and disrespectful. It, honestly, makes very little sense to me, but I gave up trying to make sense of human ego-driven decisions a long time ago.
I’ve generally used “they” because it implies an unspecified person/persons while “it” is more often used for things like inanimate objects or non humans. I suppose grammatically it would be correct to refer to a singular person as an it but I was raised to think that was rude.
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