Mixing up gender-specific personal pronouns

[xianhua]

I posted this under 'teaching English in China' as experienced teachers may have some useful study tips on helping Chinese speakers to differentiate between masculine and feminine personal pronouns (when speaking). Of course, non-teachers may also have some valuable input.

My wife has been learning English for many years and speaks fluently. However, she still frequently mixes up words like 'his' and 'her'. This really can change the overall meaning of the sentence and lead to confusion for the listeners.

[animal world]

What the English language needs is a new personal pronoun that is not gender-specific to replace the awkward but politically correct "his/her." A mistake sloppily made by many English speakers is to use "they" when it's obvious this is a reference to a single person.

[Lugubert]

From my personal experience with German (which has three grammatical genders), it's a matter of time. It is difficult to cram study gender info. But when you have read lots of pages and spent lots of time being exposed to the target language, you more often than not automatically choose correctly. Same for immigrants to Sweden: all of them bar none struggle with our two-gender system for nouns (more in a few dialects though, but those systems are facing extinction). Of course, noun gender is rather arbitrary between languages, so Russians can't translate their three-gender setup to ours in any way.

For English, there should be few problems. Gender difference will, I think, be restricted to persons and occupations. It should be no major problem to teach students to link natural gender of persons (or most animals) to appropriate pronouns. You won't have for example the "problem" of German which makes little persons/things neutered. (A woman is die Frau, clearly feminine, but a girl is das Mädchen, grammatically neuter just because of the diminutive -chen.) As to occupations, differentiation nowadays will often be regarded as non-PC. The firemen are now fire-fighters, and you may use "singular they" as their pronoun. Still not universally accepted, but languagelog has convincing arguments, for example here.

ETA: cross-posted, so I added some bolding.

[imron]

A mistake sloppily made by many English speakers is to use "they" when it's obvious this is a reference to a single person.

I disagree that it is either a mistake, or sloppy, and would argue that it is becoming increasingly common because it feels less sloppy than using constructions such as 'he/she', 's/he' etc. I personally prefer using singular 'they' to writing 'he/she' 's/he' or some other combination, and to me it feels more correct than using a gender specific 'he' or 'she' (which many writers now use instead), when the gender is unknown.

Long live singular 'they'

Edited December 6, 2009 at 08:47 PM by imron
spellign

[animal world]

Note: i made a reply before Imron posted but couldn't post mine because i lost the internet for a while and still encounter problems. So i'll just post the original that i saved.

The firemen are now fire-fighters, and you may use "singular they" as their pronoun. Still not universally accepted, but languagelog has convincing arguments, for example here.

It isn't so much a matter of political correctness but a reflection of a new reality in which many occupations in the developed world are carried out by either gender. People used to the word "stewardess" probably didn't blink an eye when they became acquainted with the word "flight attendant." Considering all the new words that have entered the language, particularly in the field of technology (database, mainframe, laptop, mouse, etc), it's odd that no one has come up with a new word to capture s/he and his/her.

I agree with the highly-regarded Chicago Manual of Style that recommends rephrasing instead of resorting to the singular they. It's exactly what i do. Consider the following:

A firefighter is prone to encounter many dangerous situations in the course of their duties. Therefore, they should consider whether this profession suits their personality before entering it.

or:

Firefighters are prone to encounter many dangerous situations in the course of their duties. Therefore, they should consider whether this profession suits their personality before entering it.

It really didn't take much effort to circumvent this dilemma. “Singular they” may have been adopted officially by some because it has been used millions of times. But many mistakes are made daily. I hear just about every day "anyways," "plan ahead," "very unique," etc, etc. by people working in radio. I hope these mistakes will not become standard English to prevent a big muddle what in the world the speaker/writer is trying to convey.

http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/CMS_FAQ/Pronouns/Pronouns12.html

[imron]

recommends rephrasing instead of resorting to the singular they

That works when you aren't talking about a specific person in particular, but what about when you are talking about a specific person e.g.

A: I'm meeting my new language partner today.

B: Oh really, what country are they from?

[animal world]

Sometimes it's indeed hard to rephrase. In your example, i would prefer saying, "Oh, really, what country is this new partner from?" [And BTW, what is this partner's gender (not that i really care but to shore up my grammar)? ]

I just hope that someone, a dictionary or a major newspaper, who cares, starts a contest about replacements for the tiresome s/he and his/her business and offers a $1000 prize for the best entry. Some people will come up with creative ideas.

[imron]

[And BTW, what is this partner's gender (not that i really care but to shore up my grammar)? ]

To which they reply, I don't know, I haven't met them yet

Of course the above could be rephrased as: To which person A replies, 'I don't know, I haven't met my new partner yet', but to me that seems far more clumsy than just using 'they'.

[imron]

P.S. there's no need for a competition. In time, singular they will win out

[skylee]

Which reminds me of a discussion on how to address transgender people (people who prefer to be addressed as a different gender than the one they really are). Some people ask if we can do away with titles like Mr / Ms, Sir / Madam. It feels a bit impolite but we can always call someone by their first name. But even if we don't call someone Mr / Ms, we still cannot avoid using he / she. In Chinese, someone has suggested using the word 君 instead of Mr / Ms, and it is very acceptable to simply use 他 / 他們 to refer to either sex.

What I encounter at work is -

When we recruit "workman" or "manager", because there are strict rules on job titles and we cannot just change them to "workwoman" or "manageress", we must specify that the positions are open to male and female.

But it seems that the OP is not concerned about these issues.

[animal world]

I really dislike they singular. In your example, Imron, it seemed to me B was referring to Siamese twins. It just doesn't sound right to my ears.

I would love the use of 君. Skylee, in the US we favor titles like manager, doctor, nurse, etc. just because they are not gender-specific and don't sound contrived. An employer here is not allowed to say that candidates of a specific gender are preferred (i had to resort to passive voice to prevent an awkward s/he and there's no WAY i'm going to use you know what There are not many job titles left here that are gender-specific. Off the top of my head, i can only think of "midwife." This is odd, when you come to think of, since there are plenty of male obstetric/gynecologists. So, we need to push more men into delivering babies without going for the MD and then we can call them midpersons.

[chrix]

Which reminds me of a discussion on how to address transgender people (people who prefer to be addressed as a different gender than the one they really are).

Prejudiced much?

Animalworld, if you really feel that strongly about singular they, I highly recommend you to check out the languagelog Lugubert linked to above. They even have their own category for the topic http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=27

And from the latest entry about this topic, there's a fun quote I'd like to share with you here:

Language Log reader Michael Straight tells me he once heard a clip on NPR of George W. Bush talking about the need for a father to take care of "his or her children." That would be how someone might put it if they felt anxious about committing a sexist blunder but didn't have the good sense to use singular they.

Also, some feminists (I believe) did come up with gender-neutral pronouns, I think they were written hir or something like that, but language doesn't work that way. Singular they seems to have won the day, and I expect it to become acceptable in all registers within our lifetime. Hooray for linguistic progress

[adrianlondon]

I agree with Imron. For example, saying "whan are you meeting them?" or "Where are they from?" when you don't know the gender of the person you're referring to (you were never told, or have simply forgotten) sounds perfectly fine to me.

[chrix]

It's not just limited to cases where you don't know the gender. President Obama used singular they when referring to Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., a person whose gender was out of the question: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1629

[gerri]

President Obama used singular they when referring to Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr

Majesty's plural, now available for everyone? "we are not amused"

(Sorry, couldn't resist. I'd not be in support of using "they" as singular for he/she when that should really be used, but in cases of confusion/uncertainty, I go for it myself.)

If I may take this thread even further away from the original: Do you use "she" as personal pronoun to refer to China? I see that a lot, but totally can't get myself to even consider using the female pronoun for a country...

[gerri]

As for the OP:

I think it's simply a matter of practice/automation. I've been thinking of making cards with different gender-people to get the students to react with "he" or "she" in cue... in German, there is also a lot of problems with the polite "Sie" and informal "Du" for which I wonder if a similar system could work. When you grow up with it, it just becomes natural to react according to situation/context, but in second language acquisition, these things are pretty difficult to get.

[chrix]

It's slightly archaic to use "she" to refer to a country, but it used to be quite common, in both diplomacy and poetry. In what contexts do people refer to China as "she"? In overly patriotic ones?

[atitarev]

In Russia we "discriminate" women by always using "she" and we have loads of gender-specific words for profession (not all, though). I find it good. When reading an English text about a teacher, I wonder if it's a man or a woman, if there was no male/female, he/she. In Russian, we use учитель/учительница (uchítel'/uchítel'nitsa), which make this obvious at the first mention. We don't use "they" as in singular and there is no other words to avoid mentioning the gender but of course, you can always do so, if you don't want to say.

We use друг/подруга for friend, гость/гостья for guest, I think it's important to mention the gender. On forms where the gender is not known in advance usually the male form is used.

The phrase "У нас гостья" - to me sounds much better than "we are having a female guest/visitor". You just use a female form without forcing yourself to mention the gender. It's more natural to say "we are having a guest/visitor" in English.

Women sometimes avoid being поэтесса - (feminine for поэт (poet)), thinking that poetesses are talented than poets?

My point is, the nature created two genders and it's good. Why should we avoid mentioning the difference? I don't mind using "they" in some cases where the sex is unknown.

Of course, noun gender is rather arbitrary between languages, so Russians can't translate their three-gender setup to ours in any way.

I didn't quite get it but unlike German, females are always feminine and males are masculine, grammatically, that is. Generic "human" is male (человек), "child" can be male or neuter (ребёнок, дитя). Animal names have genders assigned to them, so unlike English a "fox" is always female in Russian fairy-tales and the "fish" is also a female.

[chrix]

Lugubert wrote:

Gender difference will, I think, be restricted to persons and occupations. It should be no major problem to teach students to link natural gender of persons (or most animals) to appropriate pronouns. You won't have for example the "problem" of German which makes little persons/things neutered. (A woman is die Frau, clearly feminine, but a girl is das Mädchen, grammatically neuter just because of the diminutive -chen.

Somebody made a study once and apparently it showed that even if a woman is referred to by a neuter noun, such as "das Mädchen", or "das Model", there's a tendency to use the "sie" pronoun nonetheless anaphorically.

atitarev, the problem starts when you are talking about more than one person, or about a generic person. This is where the big debate starts in German, and to a certain extent in English. What are you doing in Russian, if you talk about "someone", is that person referred to as "he", and if you talk about "teachers" you will use the plural form of the masculine "teacher", not the feminine one, right?

[atitarev]

Agree about "das Mädchen" and sie. If "das Mädchen" is a little girl, "es" is still OK.

In Russian, "они" (oní - they) was used a long time ago, as a very polite form of he/she, usually by servants, etc, it's very seldom used in this sense in the last 100 years or so.

We use a politically incorrect "he" if we don't know the gender. For example, "I am expecting someone" - "When is he coming?". We also use generic words - person, somebody, he or she.

оно (onó) - "it" - is also offensive in Russian or can be used when talking about monsters, unknown animals.

If we talk about say obligations of a teacher, masculine "teacher" is used, even if many teachers are women. A female teacher may say, "как учитель, я такое не могу сделать!" - as a teacher, I can't do it! (the male form is used). I think this is also true for German. "Als Lehrer, kann ich das nicht tun". (Lehrerin would be the feminine form).