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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ส.ค. 2024
- There are important corrections to this video. Visit here: www.tomscott.c... or pull down the description to read them. Original description: Grammatical gender is a silly concept. So I'm about to go against my vow of descriptivism, and risk being run over by the Linguistic Mafia's bus, and say this: it's a silly idea.
CORRECTIONS
March 9th, 2019
Back in 2013, I made a video about ‘singular they’ and gender-neutral pronouns. Looking back on it with half a decade of hindsight, there are several things I want to correct. I also have a few thoughts on how the reactions to it have changed over time, and why the video’s comments will remain off.
Firstly, while editing the video, I cut the first sentence of the script. That sentence didn’t seem to add anything, and I’m a believer in ‘don’t bore us, get to the chorus’. That would have been fine - if only the script didn’t refer back to that first sentence later on, noting that the viewer probably didn’t notice the singular they in it.
There used to be an annotation explaining that mistake, but TH-cam’s deleted all annotations now. I regret the error.
Secondly, I mentioned that recently-coined gender-neutral prounouns (hir, xe, etc) haven’t caught on in regular usage, and that trying to deliberately add new words into a language is extremely difficult. I think that’s true, but my tone was a bit too dismissive - there was an implied value judgment there. I’d rephrase that in a second video.
And finally, I co-opted a couple of LGBT slogans, both in the title of the video and the video itself. Those aren’t my slogans to rewrite, and adding ‘with apologies to’ in the reference line isn’t a great way of solving that. Looking back, I’m uncomfortable with those.
Changing times
In 2013, the video was uncontroversial. You can see that in this chart of likes and dislikes over time from TH-cam’s analytics tool:
[graph available on www.tomscott.c... ]
The video received very few dislikes until 2016. And I remember the comments from back then: those dislikes weren’t from angry conservative types. Instead, those were speakers of languages that used grammatical gender - they were angry that I’d insulted their language!
But you can see the tide start to shift in 2016. This is why I turned off comments: it seems that a small number of people with limited empathy deliberately search out videos about subjects like this just so they can hit ‘dislike’, leave awful comments that are usually one of a few toxic in-jokes, and go. TH-cam's moderation tools remain desperately inadequate at dealing with that problem without appointing full-time moderators, and frankly, that would be time and money that could be better spent on almost anything else. For that reason, the comments are going to remain off.
If I were to remake this video in 2019, the most significant change would be focus: the title would be all about singular they, not gender-neutral pronouns. It probably wouldn’t even mention LGBT issues beyond a quick reference. It wouldn’t be a shout of hey, did you know about these folks, because five years later, most people watching the video do. Instead, it’d be a quiet nod of I see you.
What worked for a 2013 audience doesn’t work in 2019.
It seems that, over the last few years, non-binary and trans folks have reached stage three on the Williams Scale: ‘then they fight you’. Hopefully, it won't take long to reach stage four: ‘then you win’.
This comment section was reasonable a few years ago when I put this video up, but now it seems like there's a lot more kneejerk-reaction boors who comment without watching the video. Everything's already been said and I'm sick of banning jerks, so I'm closing these comments. (And yes, I accidentally trimmed the "very first sentence" that I refer to while I was editing. I regret the error!)
down south we also have "y'all"
"She" in german is "Sie". The formal version of "you" is also "Sie". And "They" is also "sie". I think we got a problem.
Just bring back thee/thou/thy/thine and get it over with.
I never knew that blond and blonde weren't interchangeable.
ValiantVole // SanicSquad a better example would be waiter and waitress
I see - actor and actress as well. Although, are they not nouns?
I've been using "they" and the only problem I've encountered are a few flustered self-proclaimed grammarians. Most people don't even notice I'm using it. I can't imagine going back.
+That Guy 007 It'll usually be pretty clear from context. If it's not, you can always supplement with "they all" (th'all?), just like we do with "you".
A lot of times when someone doesnt really know if a person is female or male 'they' say 'they' this isnt a new thing at all but people are acting like it is.
And then there's us Finns, who have no kind of gender words for anything. For example he or she are both " hän " in Finnish.
As a native French speaker, I can't imagine how hard it must be to learn what words are 'male' and others are 'female'. There's just no logic behind it !
a key is... heavy?
I kind of laughed at "if that surprises you, you need to get out more" because the only times I've ever in my life encountered this gender discussion thing, or people who identify differently, have been times when I'm sitting at home on my laptop or phone -being rather antisocial..
I've been using "their/them/they" in place of an unknown gendered pronoun since the 1980s. is it really a new phenomenon?
The only thing that ever surprised me was finding out last year that up until recently it was considered correct and not at all insensitive to use the pronoun "it" for all babies.
What I find interesting about the use of "they" as singular is that it's kinda the same thing as what happened to "you". As in, "you" used to be exclusively plural while "thou" was exclusively singular, then "you" became both plural and singular, and "thou" got phased out. Now "they" is being used as singular too (and has been used as singular before, but in less specific cases) - the only difference is it's not really phasing any other pronoun out.
Great video! I find it funny how my English teacher said, "singular 'they' is grammatically incorrect," when she uses it constantly!
moutardism you could have even said "they use it all the time" and you would be correct
moutardism No examples?
Max Is Mad She says things like, "Who left their planner on their desk?" if that's what you were asking
Max Is Mad No need to get so mad :p
It's partly the point of the video. If she paid attention to what she was saying, and stayed true to her belief that "they" can't be singular, she would have said something like "Who left his or her planner on his or her desk"
moutardism no one says that -_-
In Spanish:
His table = su mesa
Her table = su mesa
Their table = su mesa
What about just "table"?
I love how in Spain computers are male (el ordenador) but in Latin America they are female (la computadora) 😆
Mine identifies as a leaf on a palm tree.
+carmarcam98 and thats how a computer virus spreads
+carmarcam98 Hispanic America, not Latin America.
In Slovenia they are male too
Personally what I find questionable about always using he or she isn't that a few people don't fit that description but rather that is suggest that the gender of a person is always relevant to the subject. Especially when talking about a hypothetical person I find it irritating to have to assign them a gender to talk about them even if that is in no way relevant to what I'm trying to say.
+Elise Weusthuis my native language is german and (while I DO also think that every noun having a gender is unnecessary and hard to learn) we would just say "the person" everytime instead of he/she when talking about a hypothetical person (Yes, a bit complicated too I know !).
+Elise Weusthuis We only have 1 third person pronoun in Estonian :)
Also we use this word to refer to other animals besides humans.
+relo999 Not at all. It's awkward if you want to write or speak about people in general and have to chose a gender, which implies you are only talking about one gender.
relo999 You are right but in different languages 'they' isn't always gramatically correct.
relo999 Maar in het 2e geval zullen mensen er eerder van uit gaan dat het over een vrouw gaat. Zegmaar in een zin als 'Als de dokter een operatie doet gebruikt hij/zij een scalpel' Als je daar 'zij' zegt lijkt het een vrouw en als je 'gebruiken zij' zegt heb je het ineens over meerdere doktoren. Daarnaast heb je nog dat heel veel beroepen een mannelijke en vrouwelijke vorm hebben. Een boer is een man en een boerin is een vrouw, je kunt er dan bijna niet onderuit om er een te kiezen.
Blond and blonde? I didn't realize that was different. In my part of the US we use blonde for both genders
2:07 Minor nitpick: his motions don't match the order of the cards.
I'm sure this comment section will go over well.
I'm a native French speaker and even though every noun in French has a "gender" I never actually thought of feminine noun as being feminine, nor of masculine nouns being masculine. I know it sounds absolutely impossible, but to me, giving a "gender" to words has absolutely nothing to do with actual genderism. Rather, it's just a way of making them sound more pleasant to the ear, and having them fit better in sentences. Yes, it's a bitch to learn, as there is no actual rule to determine what gender a noun is, you just gotta learn it, word by word.Plus it makes the writing and reading a bit harder. But I do believe that it adds a lot of beauty to the language. Without it, French certainly wouldn't be as pleasant to the ear as it is.
+Ray Evans I'm still confused as to how it's harder to learn. The way I see it, it's just an added syllable to the word, although not attached.
Ray Evans Oh, okay. That makes sense now. Thanks! :)
+Ray Evans Interesting. By conjugation errors do you mean spelling errors or actual wrong grammar in spoken French? I'm German and our kids stop mixing up conjugations in primary school or shortly thereafter. Then again, our spelling is very straightforward.
+Ray Evans I agree with that. But I think spelling is easier for non-native speakers. Think of "would of" in English, it's a common mistake for native speakers which people who learned English as a second language never make.
+crazy808ish Not really, when we're dealing with a language, that has complicated declination. Let's look at Polish. "He" is "on" and "she" is "ona". But when you say "he/she (is missing)" you say either "jego" or "jej". "(I'm giving it to) him/her" is "jemu/jej". "(I'm talking to) him/her" i "jego"/"ją". "with him/her" i "Z nim/nią", "About him/her" is "o nim/niej". And there is neutral gender (similar, but not identical with male) and two genders (maleperson and non-maleperson) in plural.
I don't know how it is with other Germans, but I don't think of keys as jagged, hard or heavy or think of a bottle wearing a pink dress. In general I don't associate any attributes to an object just by gender alone. And I have only ever heard such associations from people trying to learn German as a second language, who try to associate gendermarkers to objects just to remember the correct article.
Yet you're still putting gender on it. Though you're not consciously thinking about it, you're still doing it.
***** because the language requires to do so. Still doesn't mean I put gender markers on objects.
buciallstar
You don't really realizes what subconsciously means do you? Not only that but the language requiring it at all is still what's wrong. You're still implying an intimate object has a gender roll.
***** you don't understand the german language. The gender of a noun doesn't imply the sex of the noun. In german, gender is a grammatical structure and sex is well the sex of a biological creature.
In german, the word for girl has a neuter gender. That literally doesn't mean that the girl doesn't have a female sex.
Yeah, English speakers have a hard time understanding that it's more about the grammar and phonotactics(at least in Bulgarian). It's funny that a _linguist_ would say this sort of thing, because it sort of really demonstrates the bias in thinking caused by his own native language.
Fact: In Turkish there is no separation of "she" and "he" and "it" , there is only one 3rd person pronoun which is "o"
Hah Chinese doesn't have this problem. But it has so much more ;7;
+ConWolf well, verbal chinese doesn't, but written chinese does.
+darkbuttrfly Also it has measure words, which are like the single dumbest things in language ever.
I would disagree on them being dumb haha, we as english speakers just aren't used to it.
+1Ewery1 Haha they're kind of weird but honestly, most people turn to 個 for most things anyways (my parents are native Chinese speakers). We still use specific measure words like the ones for clothes very often though. Since I can speak Chinese fluently, it comes as naturally as anything else in the language.
darkbuttrfly I guess, but they're mostly useless. When I was in China it seems like everyone just used 个 anyways, but I could be wrong.
Oh, so that's the difference between blond and blonde.
As a Finn, it is a little bit confusing while learning new languages, and the gender related words, since we only have the word "hän", and it does not give any information, other than that the target is human.
In Russian we would say "Tom Scott обновил СВОЁ изображение профиля", which means something like "Tom Scott updated SELF profile picture". Means his/her/its own picture
did he dieded
yes they did
well played, sir ... i mean it... they? hmmm
just use "well played". the sir is offensive.
yes, ma'am
They died, yes.
I've been using "they" as a singular gender neutral pronoun since I started studying English 15 years ago. I always thought it was common.
In Bulgarian we have grammatical genders too, which seemed natural to me until I tried learning German.
"there are folks who don't want to be identified as either he or she and if that surprises you, you need to get out more." I LOVE YOU AND THIS VIDEO
"Source: The Outside World"
Haha :D
+Barry Smith Tom Scott basically became my hero at this point.
D600Active I agree. Very interesting videos.
+Barry Smith This is a youtube comment thread, where the assholes congregate...
D600Active
Haha :D
Kilves X
"Mentally stable" is a relatively meaningless term, unless you're talking about mental stability in the context of an individual, not "humanity" as a whole.
Besides. Gender is 10% biological, 90% psychological. It's largely dependent on the configuration of the human brain. To claim that other genders "don't exist" is just the same as claiming that it's impossible for the human brain to be composed structurally in a way that already satisfies the laws of physics.
"Some people are 'they'
Get over it"
Brilliant
I speak both German and Spanish, and I didn't associate "key" with any gender stereotype. I don't do that for any words based on their grammatical gender, it doesn't even cross my mind to do so. I can see why native english speakers might do that, though.
The English speaking countries have it easier, they don't have grammatical genders like Italians, French, Spanish, etc etc etc. I can't think of a neutral gender in my own language, because we don't have one. However, when it comes to objects, we don't really mean a bottle is a girl or the sun is male, it's just how romance languages evolved.
I love how you gave yourself the job of writing "linguistic mafia" in the bus
I don't hey why people don't like being called "they". I'm 100% biologically male and completely identify as such, and I don't even notice when some refers to me as "they".
That's because it's not a big deal, at all. It's just a pride thing, people are stupid.
Now you just need to start using the royal "we", and the singular will be indistinguishable from the plural. The person will become the group, the group will become the person... A linguistic conclusion to collectivist thinking.
Vestin Okay, that is clever. I just hope it is not another complaint about changes in language.
Laetitian Madhatter That depends on what you have in mind. I'm not nearly insane enough to insist that English should never change in any way, but that doesn't mean I will automatically agree with everything. Just because I disagree with something, it doesn't mean that I will fail to recognize it as (linguistic) reality, however.
*I guess you might expect that I'd be for changes which help us make things clearer rather than the ones that cloud differences*... Not necessarily. Ambiguous third person can be useful when you lack the appropriate information (or when writing a book where you refuse to provide it), but "they" would obscure things even further. It DOES the job, but it's ugly.
I use "eee" to refer to gender neutrality because it ends both he and she so...
I bet ee would be reall mad.
+Vestin *cough* Anthem by Ayn Rand. c:
+Drigeolf The trouble is not the gender, you can always use “he” to mean a person of any gender where gender is not important. The trouble is when people use “they” as a singular pronoun: “Zeynep changed _their_ profile picture” sounds really stupid when you “Zeynep changed _her_ profile picture” sounds just ok. “They” has taken too many functions due to excessive political correctness and causes ambiguity. Kafayı yerim şu tekil they yüzünden valla :))
Here in germany, we have a big discussion about if the Breadspread called "Nutella" is female or neutral.
The manufacturer itself sais "die Nutella"(feminime), but there are still some dumb people who get angry about it and say it its "das Nutella"(neutral). It is one example for a system, which has no big purpose and only confuses foreign learners and also some Mother tongues.
But i would miss it tbh
I totally agree. In fact, They as a genderless pronoun only became 'wrong' quite recently, and really there's just no point in insisting it's definitely a collective.
I don't see what's the problem many English speakers have with singular they. I learnt to use that pronoun for unidentified gender before I even knew what binary gender meant. It's not hard to grasp that concept and I wish Portuguese had an equivalent to they.
Using "they" in place of "he" or "she" sounds awkward at first to me, but I really do like it. Makes things less awkward when addressing someone or a group of people.
Stefan Kojadinov not at all. "Your" is a possessive. "You're" is a contraction. You have to be a moron to not know the difference in their context. You're just making them relate somehow when they actually don't. And language evolves. It doesn't "dumb down" as you seem to think. If things do change with gender neutral pronouns, there would have be new grammar rules. It wouldn't just become some moshpit of speech. If anything, you're the moron for thinking that's the case. Now stop trying to act smart with your swearing and your uppercase typing.
Teddy Catnip No, if you NEED context it's dumbing down you moron.
Stefan Kojadinov you still haven't said why "your" and "you're" is relevant to this conversation. And once again, language evolves. That doesn't necessarily make it for the better, but it doesn't "dumb down" as you so stupidly think.
You must also really think that languages that already are using gender neutral pronouns are "dumbed down" languages, huh?
Teddy Catnip Evolves? Cause making it simpler is evolving? Man, no words how stupid you are. I don't see what you don't get to be honest If you NEED context it's bad and can lead to many misunderstandings, end of story. Needing context=bad. End of story
Stefan Kojadinov you really didn't get what I was saying. I said language evolves. When something evolves, it changes, for better or for worse. How can you even attempt to argue grammar with me when you clearly don't know what evolve means?
My only issue with "they" is that it's not possible to tell if it is "one" or "more than one", and generally I am used to it being the latter.
I mostly agree. But to some extent I have the same problem with "you". Unless it's abundantly clear from the context, I always tend to assume "you" is singular. And sometimes that assumption is wrong, which can lead to minor confusion in the next few sentences. "They" is not that different in that sense.
Raizin I'm a Texan, so You is always singular and Y'all is always plural.
***** That's a bit dramatic - capitalization in English is already weird enough. Also, how could you tell the difference at the start of a sentence?
***** That only works for written language though... Which is a bit limiting...
***** The "it's clear in context" argument can be applied to written text as well.
I'm okay with grammatical gender. I think English speakers too often think of "natural gender" when they think of "gender". But "grammatical gender" is different from "natural gender". Grammatical gender is merely a way of classifying words that need to agree in a language. It's a classification system. You might as well call it "category 1", "category 2", and "category 3". All the modifiers associated with a noun in a sentence will match in their structure. An adjective will change its structure to match either a "masculine" or "feminine" noun. English speakers see this as ludicrous, because we know from experience that it's not necessary to express oneself. But in a lot of languages it seems ludicrous that you wouldn't want/need your modifiers to match what they're modifying. There are a lot of features that English has that aren't necessary. People of other languages are probably laughing and wondering why we still have them. We're thinking the same thing about their language.
Funny and sad at the same time that years later people are still arguing about if those some people (the ones that are they) exist. I ran into this through recommend videos, thought about people I run into who would be all offended over the concept, and then read a few comments and was basically like "Oh. Of course they've been here being clueless and hateful. Why wouldn't they?"
"Source: the outside world" I about died at that part
Hello. I'm a 15-year-old guy from a city near Barcelona, and I'm a native speaker of Catalan and Spanish, but I also speak English and a bit of French. I know that you probably won't read this but I want to say it anyway. I've been following you for a while and I really enjoy your videos, I think they're very interesting and I've learnt a lot. I don't usually write comments on videos but I wanted to give my opinion: I'm a little upset because of what you said about gramatical gender. I understand that you criticise a particular feature of some languages, which is perfectly normal since everyone should be able to give their opinion about anything they want to but saying that it's silly is a bit excessive I think, and you might offend some people. Just because you aren't used to it doesn't mean that it's useless. Catalan and Spanish have this feature, and for me it's perfectly normal and without it they would be worse in my opinion. Oh, and it doesn't mean that inanimate objects turn into people and they become male or female, but that the words are masculine or feminine, which is a big difference. And that might influence the way some people think, but some other features of English also influence the way English speakers think. Including not having gramatical gender. But I don't mean to criticise. I'm respectful with other languages (as you in all your other videos that I've seen), and plus I think that English is a really beautiful language. But Spanish and Catalan too. In spite of having gramatical gender. Which is not a bad thing at all. It's one of the things that make languages to be different from each other, to be richer, to be beautiful. And it's useful to tell words apart and to use metaphors, which in my opinion have a deeper meaning thanks to that. But I'm not here to defend it. And I'm sorry if that makes this kind of languages harder to learn because these words don't have a logical pattern (and actually most of them do). But it's what makes languages special. And I'm not criticising English for having phrasal verbs, for example, which is a comparable case. Or for having to mention the subject of each sentence or to include a subject for almost always (in Catalan and Spanish we have what is called a "sujeto elíptico", in Spanish (I think that's called a null-subject in English but I'm not quite sure)). And I don't think that's bad at all. It's just different. And I'm not criticising it because these things make English more special.
Thanks for your videos;) And thank you if you've read my comment.
Òscar.
Gran comentario.
marmjtin Gracias:)
tl;dr
oscaar_39 too long, but read it anyway. good comment.
oscaar_39 estudios en leguas y la forma en que tu idioma informa tu pensamiento han demostrado que todo lo que el dijo es verdad. el exagero solo por el efecto humorístico no lo puedes tomar tan a mano. la verdad es que la falda de un genero neutral que pueda ser usado the forma personal es necesario y que el esta igual mente criticando a las personas que juzgan que "they/them/their" no se puede usar singularmente en ingles. a el no le importa que tener generos para cosas haze el idioma mas dificil. NO LE IMPORTA el es un liguista. al linguista le interesa las características del idioma. por eso el dice que normalmente no quiere juzgar y que rompio su promesa de no juzgar los idiomas.
el genero gramático tiene un gran efecto subconsciente que esta ligado a el machismo . ahi el lenguaje no es el problema y el no dice que es el problema. pero el idioma aun así se puede usar para demostrar el problema. para idiomas con géneros gramaticales la idea no es desmantelar el idioma( el esta en contra de tratar de cambiar el idioma a la fuerza). estos son temas diferentes. la necesidad de una opción (UNA OPCION) neutral en idiomas para ser inclusivos de gente fuera de lo que en ingles se refiere al "gender binary" (no se el termino en castellano). el otro problema es el machismo que es expresado a travez de los limites y las characteristicas de los idiomas
I use they all the time without thinking about it
My only complain about English is the use of the neutral gender "it" when speaking of animals, I just can't get used to it, it just feels wrong.
Using "she/he" when talking about animals in English is perfectly correct when you know their sex (and when it does matter). You may say for example "I have a dog. She is pregnant."
I don't like it either. "It" makes it feel like it's a thing. Like you are taking away part of it's rights as a living creature.
Yeah, I've never understood that, I mean, it's not that hard to just use they instead. It's not just animals either, people use it for babies that are very young or unborn which, again, I'm not sure why people don't just say they.
***** No. Are you? Or do you just have anger issues?
***** What are you on about? I didn't say anything about hurting animals feelings. I am not even a vegetarian. But calling something "thing" takes away part of their rights as living creatures.
in portuguese they and their have to be male or female
"they" can be "eles" (masculine) or "elas" (feminine)
"their" can be "deles" (masculine) or "delas" (feminine)
I know.. And I hate it. I want to be called by my correct pronouns but unfortunately I can't ( porque o brasil é uma merda ajhsjdjs )
in africa here we have gender pronouns for items, but i dont have many items hahaha.
I as a Spanish speaker (Argentinian) got curious about what you said about describing objects based on gender, so I asked around for people to describe three objects (it was about 50 people I had asked), most described the objects objectively (pardon the redundancy) and when they used words that might have been influenced by the "gender" of the object they were asked if they found a connection between the gender and the way they used to describe it, I've found most didn't, only five doubted if they did or did not.
Guess what! In Persian there are NO gender specific pronouns! All nouns are gender-neutral and we don't even have "Definite Article"! The lack of gender-specific pronouns sometimes leads to longer sentences and issues with writing as you have to specify the gender of your characters somehow but in general it's not a big issue. But imagine how frustrating it was for me to learn Italian!
I, my whole life, have used "They"
I just go with whatever people call me. my tits usually get me called her which is cool
+STLCODPS3123 No, they presumably aren't.
(that's me thinking you were referring to your own pronouns)
I'm in the UK where my tits and face generally get me a "love" followed by a confused "mate" after they hear my voice.
It must be nice to have a language so simple you can basically do whatever you want with it and it still sounds okay-ish.
Mandarin is interesting here: 他(ta1): He, 她(ta1): She, 它(ta1): It. Same word in spoken language but distinguished when written.
I'm still trying to get over just saying "he". But in my honest opinion, if you get offended because I didn't cater to every existing group with that one single word, you're reading too deep into it.
+HQDefault There is nothing wrong with using "he" as it has been used as a gender neutral pronoun for hundreds of years. If Tom was a linguist he would know that.
+98smithg2 He surely does. But 'they' was used as a gender neutral pronoun for hundreds of years, as well, so I don't really see the point you are trying to make.
You are correct that "they" was gender neutral but it was also plural and not singular. Historically speaking "he" was the singular ungendered pronoun.
+98smithg2 I thought "she" was the singular ungendered pronoun. Ships, homes, things without gender were often referred to as "she".
+Gábor Nagy I do not know of any linguistic or etymological justification for for calling ships 'she'. As far as I understand it the use comes from superstitions or religions beliefs of ancient mariners who saw the ship as a mother figure who protected them while at sea.
you probably got this a lot from the comments on this video but it really means the world to me that you acknowledged non-binary gender in a non-shitty-and-closed-minded way.
Why didn't he complain about articles? If something is absent in your natural language, it doesn't become "stupid" or "really silly". Grammar gender is just another attribute of a noun.
I don't understand.+Константин Войнов
Every language contains a lot of unnecessary parametres. But they differ in defferent languages. English has 16 verb forms for active voice and 8 for passive voice.He mocks it too, doesn't he?
+Константин Войнов But in this case, the unnecessary parameter can have detrimental effects in how we think of and in our acceptance of people of a non-binary or undisclosed gender, meaning it has significant real world impacts, unlike the number of verb forms for active and passive voices. That's why it's noteworthy, and deserving of some discussion.
Well, that's very nice about Russian, but seems somewhat irrelevant to the point made in the video.
***** You seriously deny the impact of language on our opinions and thoughts? I would need more than just a "promise" to be convinced of your position, care to give the reasoning behind your argument?
I'm glad finnish language doesn't have any of these or articles.
"Hän" is for everyone.
Though we use "se" more often which basically means "it" but it sounds more natural than "hän" :D
Minne se meni? (Where did it go?)
Se meni kauppaan. (It went to the store.)
I have been using words like they and their as gender neutral pronouns for decades now.
PlasmaMongoose Me too. Strictly speaking it may be ungrammatical but its usefulness far outweighs that and I'm glad the usage has steadily risen in acceptability."If someone drinks too much they'll get a hangover". Another solution sometimes is to use "you" where the word refers to anybody. "You have to be strong to be a boxer." The Facebook usage is unintentionally humorous. It sounds as if Tom Scott has updated the profile of a number of unknown individuals ("their") rather than his own ("his"). Surely Facebook knows which sex Tom Scott is or could deduce it. (I don't use Facebook).
+Rosie6857 Facebook doesn't ask for sex, Facebook asks for gender.
Also, how would Facebook know or deduce what sex or gender Tom is for sure without asking him? And why would they hire anyone to check that?
Whoever edited this wasn't listening. 2:08
One linguist to another, I've been using singular 'they' for as long as I can remember, it just makes so much more sense.
Allow me to demonstrate a slight problem. "(Gender neutral) Daniel has decided to join the Tennis Club. They really hate the jews." Who is the implied "They" there? Is it the club, or Daniel? Is this sentence supposed to imply that the club and/or Daniel hate the jews? It's a difficult concept, because you can approach it with "The problem is that Daniel is jewish himself, but he likes tennis." Or you can describe it with "They're a bit anti-semitic." Which still doesn't clear it up. It just isn't optimal. And when I say that, I mean both the singular pronoun "They" and anti-semitism in general.
+The J-Key Yeah, that's one of the unfortunate parts about it - although the source of it is really the ambiguity of how we link pronouns to nouns. Keep in mind, this same situation happens if you talk about anything two or more things that would share a pronoun ( i.e. "Bill said to Ted that he should get him a cup of tea." ), so it's hardly something that stems from mixing singular and plural ones.
And in the specific sentence you used, it also shows the problem can also stem with how we can refer to a group or the things in the group by just using the word for the group. Taken as is, you could easily tell that "they" refers to Daniel because the Tennis Club would be an it, as it's not a person or even a living being - except because English allows it, it adds ambiguity in the form that it's possible that "they" could refer to the members of the Tennis Club despite not even being mentioned.
Also, I reeeeaaaaally overuse the interruptive -, heh, although you won't really see this because I've broken them into separate sentences before posting this.
wtf as a native speaker of a language that has grammatical gender I can confirm that I DO NOT ASOCIATE MALE OR FEMALE TRAITS TO OBJECTS BASED ON GRAMMATICAL GENDER, it's not stupid it helps clarify a lot of things and you saying so firmly that it "alters the way one thinks" is only proof that you don't understand its true usefulness
"Language affects the way people think" has been a pretty popular concept in linguistics for ages. People have even constructed entire languages to test the limits of this idea. So yes, grammatical gender will affect the way someone think of the world, even if slightly or unnoticeably.
That said, I've never heard of a good reason to have grammatical gender.
Of course, I think it's a fact that your language defines the way that you conceive the world (I didn't make myself clear) but definitely not in that way, as he is just assuming that native speakers of a language that has grammatical gender asociate male or female traits with objects based on that (probably because he himself does) when in reality that doesn't happen. I think it's an extremely anglo-saxon thing to do -calling gram. gender stupid- because they tend to think that theirs is somehow good enough to overshadow other tongues, when neither language is superior than other, each one is a profound (did I spell that right??) reflection of a culture's identity and the way that they relate with the world around them. Isn't it narcisistic to think that g.g. should be extinguished just because it seems overly complicated to an anglophone? Boy was that long!!
Oh btw, regarding your second statement, it helps specify things like: "My friend." Is it a man? A woman? you'll have to add a longer description just to clarify that whereas in: "Mi amiga", you'll always know it's a woman. I'll never claim that english should have it only because my tongue does and it's useful to me.
I speak Hebrew and I'm very slowly learning Spanish. I also speak English natively. I'd much rather ask male or female if I care, than have to assume for everyone. I can't just go eat with them. I have to eat with them (males), or them (females). Why does it matter? If it does matter, then adding a word that clarifies that, say, "I went out to eat with the females". It helps showcase the point that I don't care whether whoever you went out to eat with are males or females.
If it's really necessary to convey that information, then you can always just stick the word "male" or "female" in.
Well it is kind of useful anyways, right? Ok I admit it's not that much of a big deal but my actual argument here is that no language is superior and calling esential parts of a tongue 'stupid' is just off the point. Does hebrew have grammatical gender?
Strange that we still refer to ships as "she."
My theory is that men (the only ones who would sail ships 100s of years ago) wanted to call them beautiful, but since only females could be beautiful (apparently) they called them 'she'.
+Shawn Ravenfire I would say that that's not about language but instead tradition.
+Toby Butcher Well, tradition is intertwined with culture which in turn influences language. The three are seldom mutually exclusive.
+Shawn Ravenfire Not exactly. According to the nautical press, ships have been "he" for some time now.
+Shawn Ravenfire Ships are vessels, you enter them.
You = singular
You = plural
They = singular
They = plural
grammatical gender is more about spelling and flow then literal gender, that's why 'inanimate' can be a gender. In german most words that end in an e are feminine, the cat is 'die Katze' and that sounds better than 'der Katze'. It only actually has anything to do with biological gender when in reference to humans, and in that case it is helpful because you can make more distinctions between people when talking about a third party 'he gives her the book' is more obvious in meaning than 'they give them a book'.
"and in that case it is helpful because you can make more distinctions between people when talking about a third party 'he gives her the book' is more obvious in meaning than 'they give them a book'."
That advantage disappears when we're talking about people of the same gender, so it isn't really too significant.
Really, gender-neutral pronouns are *much* more convenient than having to remember which gender goes to each noun. I mean, most languages that have gendered nouns don't have very consistent rules on which words are male and which are female, so it's usually an unwieldy, pointless mess. In English, all objects are "it", and *that's really damn convenient*.
Fernie Canto Okay, so it is a little pointless, but it makes for good flow and it does make it obvious who is doing what to who when talking about people of both genders, while not always being helpful it does take away some ambiguity.
So yeah, not perfectly necessary but what are you going to do? make everyone change the way they speak? no. I'll continue saying he and she regardless if a small minority doesn't use those words.
RAGNARTHEVIKING9595
"So yeah, not perfectly necessary but what are you going to do? make everyone change the way they speak?"
That happens all the time in every language. Languages change naturally over time, according to usage. As gender-neutral pronouns are becoming more necessary, future generations will use them without blinking, and will even wonder why the hell we didn't speak like that today...
Fernie Canto I was talking about forcing people to change the way they speak and how that's bad.
+Fernie Canto But, when using a gendered pronoun, you learn something about the noun - its gender. It can really help when there are a good chunk of people with names that belong to both genders.
And you shouldn't use two pronouns when talking about something that shares the same pronoun, be it "he", "she", "it", "they" or whatever pronoun because that complicates things for the reader.
If anything, gender neutral pronoun make the sentence structure more complex because then, you can use a pronoun for one of the people mentioned in the sentence and never the other, or it will cause the complication I've mentioned..
Why are people disliking..
Because pride and regression.
2:30
"Source: The outside world"
LMAO
Don't usually comment on videos, but it is an interesting question.
In some ways grammatical gender can be confusing, and I always had a great deal of difficulty in languages such as German with 'der', 'die', and 'das'. Then I realised the problem was not with 'der', 'die', and 'das', but simply that we call it gender. If we just said they were three different cases, and ignored any sexual connotation, then why worry about it. In English, we have no difficulty understanding whether to use 'a' or 'an' depending on the word following; so what is the difficulty about using 'der' or 'die' or 'das' depending on the word following (and not worrying too much about the assumptions associated with sex and gender).
Hfil66 Your comment makes A LOT of sense to me. :)
In English there's a clear rule when something is 'a' or 'an'. In German you just need to know. For me, that is one detail that makes German so difficult to learn, not the fact that linguistics call it gender.
What is truly silly is attempting to change a language simply because of some moral view. It is the people, not the words, that define a culture.
+SakraNomoko Something that's been used since Shakespeare is hardly a change.
***** Such a use of "they" does date back to Shakespeare's time, but practical improvements have been made since then. For purposes of number agreement, the usage of "they", as referring to a generic or indefinite antecedent, was changed to "he" around the mid-18th to the early 19th centuries.
And you completely missed the point of the video...... idiot
2016 and I'm 19 now. I have never ever considered that a singular they would be a problem. I always thought it was just third person in general; in that you can either use it for a group, an entity, or just to describe someone in third person. THAT BEING SAID - I am in New Zealand.... we talk different here
did anyone notice that when he pointed at "he" "she" and "it" they weren't in the right place
To refer to the viewers, y'all always works
I wont let anyone tell me how to speak, regardless of the genitalia they may or may not have.
This is unfortunately one of Tom Scott's less informed videos. Grammatical gender is a subset of lexical classification and is just one way some languages implement that feature. Broadly, it's a cognitive tool for the brain to categorize words, which he should have found searching the literature. Masculine and feminine are just labels society has come up with. The effects on thinking you've described are purely pragmatic; in other words, it's a case of one social convention producing a social subtext. Stated this way, it's not particularly surprising.
Blinky Lass I agree completely, it was a very strange thing to hear from a guy who seems into things like this. But it's fun to find out how people react to the way different languages and cultures are. Strictly descriptive approach would've been boring compared to this. :D
Blinky Lass I completely agree concerning what you say about the cultural impact which grammatical gender might have on gender perception, but I am not sure why you think he would not have been aware of the difference between grammatical gender and biological sex or gender.
Lexical classification is aided to some extent, but that does not mean he did not research that impact and concluded that it was insignificant. Which he would not really have had to cite a lot about, because that is not the point he was making.
Like he said, English still manges perfectly well without non-personal grammatical gender.
Blinky Lass He actually covers this. If three quarters of the world's languages don't have it, surely it's 'a cognitive tool for the brain to categorize words' that just isn't needed. I don't need any gender classification to understand what a chair or a computer is.
Total hogwash. If things needed to be gendered, why doesn't English have gender. Your point makes literally no sense.
No, you're saying because something exists, it is needed. So I guess Islamic State (by your logic) is needed, because it exists.
"Source: the outside world." :D
Btw the little source banner is quite cool!
My problem with "they" is that it is in fact strictly plural. You can't use "they" with a singular verb. How weird would it sound if I said, "They is at home?" "They" must be used with "are," which is a plural verb. Using a plural pronoun and a plural verb in order to refer to a singular subject will never work. Don't try to change that.
too bad for you that it does work because people do it and have been doing it
That's unfortunate considering both the fact that people have been using "they" to refer to a single person whose gender is unknown for centuries and also the fact that I use they/them pronouns.
Did you hear about the lone driver who crashed into the tree near Main Street? *They* must have been drunk.
Except it literally does work. Plenty of people use it and the only people who are confused are those who deliberately insist that they can't figure a sentence out through context. So there's that.
Jasmine Collins well, you're wrong. You can give your opinion, but don't lie. A lot of people consider it impractical, because it is. It's user
For plurality. If you want to have a neutral term (other than it, which btw I don't get the problem of using it), invent one, but don't try to change something in a way that sounds horribly incorrect and ambiguous. Then again. "Tom was with some friends at the bar. At ten o'clock they went to station" who went to the station? Tom? Or "their" friends? It's stupid. I don't have any problem with people not defining themselves as the classic gender identities, but don't fuck up lenguage just because you adapt to the rules, the majority think it's stupid. Invent your term and start using it. Maybe you are not a "she" or a "he", you're a "thee" or something like that. Fine by me.
Silly person, language changes over time. Did you forget? :P
The male and female in the French language is just to classify word types. Words that end with an e in the French language are considered female which means you will be using la, une, elle and so on which are normally pronouns for females. It's not because the item is considered a female though, it's because it sounds better and writes itself better.
yes, this guy is just making a ridiculous stance.
its also the same in slovenian
That still feels a bit like a silly reason, though. :p
Same thing I noticed learning spanish. La and El are backwards and fit words different to flow better.
La for words that start with a consonant and El for words that start with a vowel. It's just logical.
I never knew the blond/blonde rule, I just assumed it was a difference in U.S./UK spellings and call everyone with light hair "blonde".
It's the little things that make this video great.
Ex. Look at the source around 2:25
I have been waiting so long to finally speak out on this. Identifying inanimate objects with a gender is without a doubt the dumbest idea of any language.
1CombustionMan It's perfectly fine, you just aren't used to it. If they were to be removed, the whole language crumbles, everything would sound weird.
1CombustionMan I like it for poetry. Dunno why....
***** It's a finesse that I feel English is seriously lacking. I miss that feature in English; without it, language is maybe more concise, but feels sterile.
Miladin Ercegovcevic finesse? It's clunky and cumbersome . English is a langauge of getting right to the point. It doesn't need gender Identifiers like une chaise and una bottiglia. It's just unnecessary.
Miladin Ercegovcevic logical is not the same as sterile, and just because something is messy doesn't mean it's artistic or delicate.
Not only Shakespeare, but writers such as Dickens, Austen, and Hemingway. I figure if they can do it, so can I.
Yeah, grammatical gender is stupid. For example, in German every fruit is feminine (eg: die Melone, die Banane, die Orange, die Birne, die Kirsche, die Weintraube ...) except for the apple (der Apfel), which makes no sense at all.
+HannosWelt | @HennoeR der pfirsich?!
+Vojak3 rofl that's the kind of nationalist bullshit I was looking for
+Vojak3 Thats stupid. You sound like you are coming from BuzzFeed.
+HannosWelt | @HennoeR why are germans telling fruits to die??????
+HannosWelt | @HennoeR
Yes, but the impression this video gives of peoples conception of objects with regards to gender here is in my view quite exaggerated - it has quite little effect, because the gendering of the words makes little sense to begin with, or is sometimes completely contradictory, like "Die Männlichkeit", masculinity being a feminine noun.
When I was writing essays in the 4th grade I would often accidentally use they or their instead of singular pronouns because that's what came to mind.
"Some people feel they don't fit into either of those categories and if that surprises you, you need to get out more. Source: Outside World." Tom Scott, you rock.
In Danish we got "dual-gender" and "non-gender" (would be the most direct ways to translate it at least I think)
might be, I only know the danish words for them :P
Fælleskøn = common. Intetkøn = neuter.
I was told that the danish pronouns don't really mean anything and that it's kind of random which one is used; just that "en" is more common that "et"
"They" is okay but it always bothers me when someone uses it in a context where it's meaning changes based on whether or not there are multiple people. "They" approached me.
They were on the toilet when I phoned them.
Must have been crowded in that cubicle.
Jam Starling Yep, context is everything. The seat was up. That's how it happened.
+Zymoox excellently put. it's the ambiguity of the verb declension as much as the pronoun.
Most often, when 'they' is used, who 'they' are is already determined. It's only when you start swapping who you are referring to in a sentence that it could get confusing, but that can happen with he and she as well.
it's generally specified who you're talking about, if you use 'they' out of context, people will ask you who you're talking about, regardless whether it refers to a single person or a group of people.
You was once plural as well, for the singular, there was thou, now we use you for both singular and plural without problem, and in the few cases where it is unclear, just asking clarifies the situation.
"they" makes an individual indistinguishable from any group they may interact with.
for instance:
bob went to the bar with some friends. afterward, they went walking about the town.
who is currently walking about town?
you could say bob went walking about the town or everyone went walking about the town.
The ambiguity exists with the pronoun "you" as well.
Bob: "I went to the bar with some friends."
Someone: "Where did you go after that?"
Here the "You" could be referring to Bob or the whole group.
There are ways around the ambiguity though, as well as ways around the ambiguity for "they " in those kinds of situations.
Tom Wright
you can work around many deficiencies in language, that doesn't change that they are a problem.
Santarii "The ambiguity exists with the pronoun "you" as well"
yes, english lacks a plural "you". it's been annoying the crap out of people for ages. lets not make it worse.
"bob went to the bar with their friends. afterward they all went walking around town." seems simple enough to me.
My English teacher argues with us when we use "they" or "their" to describe a persons writing when we dont know the gender.
She says "It's obviously a she, look at the hand writing". This one girl almost ripped her head off for saying stuff like that
In russian "gender" of a noun depends on its ending, so the way the words around this word change make it easier to pronaunce.
So as a medical professional, what am I supposed to use to differentiate a biological male & female now? I mean believe it or not, the treatments given to bio-males/ bio-females differ, and messing this up has serious consequences biologically.
Grammatical gender actually has some pretty subtle and even beautiful uses in languages like French, but it has no greater role than that, and is pretty meaningless on the whole.
Soooo. How do we go about indicating multiple individuals? Essentially "they" now means several people and one gender neutral individual.
+That Guy 007 English isn't a fully explicit language. "They went shopping" could be plural or singular, but in context it narrows it down, because you're either going to ask "Who's they?" or have previously mentioned the name of the person anyway.
+Nahl *you're
Oculus Universale Fixed.
Nahl THANK YOU!
Oculus Universale No problem.
thank you for talking about this. English is evolving and I'm glad some people can accept that instead of trying to delay progress
__This is not progress. It's a devolution of the language. It adds vagueness where none should be.
Wow, that's interesting! I have been using "they" as a gender neutral term for ages and have thought it was weird. Also, a way to get around the whole "you = person you're talking to" as opposed to "you = a person that does something" (as in, you should avoid landmines), it is best to use "one" for the ladder.
In Sweden han is he, hon is she. Apparently they added hen recently, a singular version of they
Depends on what you mean by recently, the word can be traced back to 1966
facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150601729734077&set=o.191186619054&type=1&theater
Kristian Jörgensen In the scale of linguistic evolution, 48 years is very recent.
I'm a native speaker of Russian and yeah, gendered words are confusing. But to me there's no association with actual gender. In Russian there's 3 genders for nouns Male, Female or Neutral. We also have 4 pronouns: оно (it) она (she) он (he) они (they)
The pronouns for it/she/he are used for objects.
Сегодня она не пошла на работу.
rough translation: Today she did not go to work.
Сегодня он не пошёл на работу.
rough translation: Today he did not go to work
Где окно?
Оно на стене.
translation: Where is the window?
It's on the wall.
The pronoun они (they) is used for plurals only.
Они приехали вчера.
rough translation: they arrived yesterday
Sorry if some things I've said aren't correct, even if I'm a native speaker, sadly my Russian isn't as good as it used to be.
h o t l i n e s l o t h . j p g You described it perfectly.
My native language Kapampangan (a Philippine regional language in the north), like other languages in my country, only have gender-neutral pronouns. There is also no distinction between "it" (inanimate) and the human third person pronoun "he/she". So in the sentence "Maragul ya," (He/She/It is big) the YA can be translated to he/she/it depending on the context. Also, our word for "man" as in mankind is gender-neutral: "Tau."
French made a (somewhat controversial) rules : if you don't know, use "il" (he) and not "il ou elle" (he or she).
Some people are starting to use "ielle".