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Re: Epicene pronoun in english?

From:Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>
Date:Saturday, March 6, 2004, 9:33
Joe wrote:
> >"A friend of mine is visiting tomorrow" "Are (is?) they coming for a > >specific reason?" > > > > > > Really? That seems a very odd situation. No wonder you Americans have > all this fun trying to invent epicene pronouns. You would never use > 'is'.
I would never use "is" either, I just wasn't sure if "is" was used or not in dialects that used singular they more frequently ("themself" also sounds exceedingly awkward to me, but I understand that it's quite common in some other dialects, so I didn't know if that "singularization" also extended to verb forms). At any rate, my point was, I would never use "they" in that situation, only a gendered pronoun or avoiding pronouns all together.
> I wonder if, eventually, they will come to represent the whole third > person, the way 'you' did the whole second person.
Probably. And then a new pronoun will have to be invented for third person plural. :-) Perhaps "them-all" or "those guys" (analagous to "you guys") or "th'all" (by analogy with y'all). In one of my future English attempts, I had just that. Singular epicene (I can't remember if I retained he/she/it) "they" plural "all'm" (< all'em < all-them < all of them) -- "There's no such thing as 'cool'. Everyone's just a big dork or nerd, you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." - overheard ICQ: 18656696 AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42