BONUS VIDEO | Singular They | Pronouns | The parts of speech

- [Voiceover] So you may have
been hearing a lot of talk

about this thing called
singular they recently

not knowing entirely what
it is or whether or not

it's okay to use in a
sentence or in formal writing.

Um, it's been in the news
a lot lately, you know

we're seeing publications
like The Washington Post

and The Economist putting
it into their style guides.

It was the American Dialect Society's

Word of the Year in 2015

but like what is it,
and is it okay to use?

I know that I got dinged all the time

for using "they" as a singular pronoun

in papers in high school, along with "is,"

I got in a lot of trouble for using "is,"

which would always be circled.

Some teachers of mine
just really hated "is."

I get it now, it's kind of weak but

anyway we're not talking about that today,

we're talking about they, singular they.

So they is more commonly known as

the plural third person pronoun in English

so if we say, you know,

Rolando and Phil

go to the park we can switch out

Rolando and Phil and say

they go to the park,

and that's one usage of they but you may

have also seen sentences
that look like this.

Like, "When a journalist files
a story they should always

"make sure their sources check out,"

or "Anyone will tell you the truth if you

"ask them the right questions,"

and you may have noticed
that these sentences

use the word "they" to
agree with a singular

antecedent like journalist or anyone.

Now for some of you, you
might not have noticed

and for some of you, you
might have, your immediate

reaction might have been, oh
wait, eh, let me get my red pen

but before you do, in order to explain

the context and the history

around this usage, around singular they,

I would like for a moment
to talk about "you."

Not you the person, you the person

are a vast unknowable ocean
but I mean you the pronoun

and how weird and transgressive

and transformative it is.

In many languages today there are

second person pronouns for both

singular and plural usage.

In French, for example,
we'd say tu for singular you

and vous for plural you.

Tu to one person, vous to many.

There's also a social distinction here

that was once more pronounced,

where you'd say vous to social superiors

and tu to close friends.

Now in those languages
the vous form is formal

and the tu form is informal.

You're addressing someone you don't know

very well, you use vous.

You're addressing your
best buddy, you use tu.

All of this is to say
that English used to have

the same distinction so this kind of

lines up with tu and vous.

Once upon a time the
singular second person

subject form was thou, the object form

of the singular was thee.

The plural second person subject form

was ye or ye and the object form was you.

This is where you comes in, all right,

and so we, it's funny because we think

of thee and thou as being more fancy

and formal but really
it was the opposite way,

this was the informal

and ye and you was the formal.

Now you may recall from our video on

who versus whom that I said whom

was on its way out of the language.

Its usage is being overtaken by who,

it is now usually permissible
to use who as an object,

as in the song Who Do
You Love by Bo Diddley.

Well the same thing
that's happening to whom

happened to ye.

Over the years its
function decreased as "you"

took over, it took on a
subject and object role

as well as singular and plural functions

but it was still reserved
for the highborn,

it was the polite form of address

used for addressing social superiors.

So even though there's only one king

you would refer to that king as "you"

because apparently he was better than you.

He wasn't, but we'll get to that.

But something marvelous
happened in English,

the social distinction
between you and thou

fell away and you overtook thou and its

subject form thee so now
for both the singular

and the plural, for the
informal and the formal,

for the subject and the
object, all we have here

is you, you, you and you.

It would be as if I, me
and we were all replaced

by us, I cannot emphasize
how revolutionary this is!

In English you address
a king and a peasant

with the same address, under
the language they are equal.

Mind you the existence of a single form

of direct address did not annihilate class

distinctions or prejudice in
the English-speaking world

but it is no longer possible to encode

a power relationship in English

in the very specific way it once was.

I cheer this development, I think it's

awfully democratic and affirming

of the principle that all human beings

are worthy of respect,
which brings us to "they."

This didn't really used to be a problem

in English composition,
people were writing

sentences like, "Everybody
has their failing,

"you know, and everybody has a right to do

what they like with their own money,"

which is a Jane Austen quote by the way

from Northanger Abbey.

Austen used this construction, Chaucer

used this construction,
Shakespeare used this construction,

C.S. Lewis used this
construction, these are the people

that we look to as paragons of correctness

and of style in English literature,

and they used this form
without any compunctions.

There is a class of
grammarians who thought

it would be a great idea
to make English adhere

to Latin grammar rules, which is where

we get silly language superstitions like

the prohibition on ending sentences

with prepositions, making it ungrammatical

to say a sentence like,
"He's a guy you can rely on,"

or spreading the spurious rumor

that you couldn't split
an English infinitive,

as in, you know, to boldly go.

These are falsehoods
and they are confusing

and they are needless,
pompous class markers

and defeating them, and making you feel

more comfortable with English is why

I got into this profession
in the first place.

Anyway, that group of
grammarians, that group

decided that when speaking
of a generic person

we should say "he," a
hypothetical person in

a sentence was always
"he" on the grounds that

according to 16th century
grammarian William Lily,

"The masculine gender is more
worthy than the feminine,"

so you'd be, you'd get
sentences that began

"Any judge worth his salt,"

or "Anyone that would say
that is out of his mind,"

which presumably was
supposed to refer to anyone.

Now for centuries arguments raged over

whether or not the generic "he" erased

women from consideration and now with

the benefit of hindsight we can say

of course it did!

The generic "he" isn't generic.

When referring to a person whose gender

is unknown or undefined by he or she,

it is elegant to call
such a person "they,"

as opposed to the ungainly "he or she"

or she, like s/he,

which on their own look alright

but in context and especially when they're

repeated tend to get a little
clunky and distracting.

What happened to the word "you"

is happening to "they," the plural

is expanding into the realm
of the singular again.

The language is changing because that's

what languages do, and
now this is something

that's already done unconsciously,

you see it in literature,
you see it in the Bible,

in formal as well as informal speech.

But formalizing this understanding is what

undergirds the decisions of The Economist

and The Washington Post

to start using singular they formally.

Like if you had to ask me right now,

"David, is singular they grammatical?"

I'd say it's as grammatical as "you"

but yeah, this is some of
the context of singular they.

This is where it comes from, this is why

it's used, this is what it's replacing,

it's replacing this generic "he" and this

kind of a clunky "she or he."

You can learn anything, David out.