[Ads-l] Apparently brainless reporting on alternative 3rd person pronouns

[Laurence Horn]

It’s just basic ecology.  We have a demand for a gender-unspecified third person singular pronoun, and we have this leftover supply of unused second person singular pronouns, so why not recycle and repurpose that inventory?  Not that I can imagine a given English speaker actually doing so, but thou might surprise me.  

> On Oct 17, 2018, at 2:46 AM, Mark Mandel <mark.a.mandel at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> WTF???
> 
> 
> Am I missing something here, or is the business about archaic 2nd person
> singular pronouns totally irrelevant?
> 
> 
> 
> https://kywnewsradio.radio.com/articles/news/how-gender-identity-and-some-old-english-come-together-international-pronoun-day
> 
> 
> October 25, 2018
> *How gender identity and some 'old English' come together on International
> Pronoun Day*
> Kristen Johanson
> October 16, 2018 - 10:05 pm
> 
> PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) -- Wednesday is the inaugural International
> Pronoun Day, designed to make people more concious of everyday speech, and
> to respect others' gender identity.
> 
> *Words like thou, thy and thee are making a comeback, for those who do not
> identify as male or female.*
> 
> "We do revert back to that old English because it is something where we
> evolved from," said Nyk Robertson is Associate Director of Gender and
> Sexuality initiatives at Swarthmore College.
> 
> Mark Mandel
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org