"The person was swimming at Jones Beach State Park Field 6 when they suffered lacerations on their foot, the New York City Parks Department said.”
What a non-native speaker reasonably familiar with English would read in there is, more or less, that a number of people sharing a single foot and possibly a common personality were bitten by a shark on that single foot but otherwise survived almost unscathed.
Alright, we’re living in an ever-changing world where so many ever-changing languages are spoken, and we must accept that or perish. But languages are supposed to change spontaneously according to the evolving habits of the people who speak them, rather than forcibly because a journalist is too, er… shy to mention a victim’s gender.
And yes, we shall also acknowledge that in the last few decades the humankind sprouted a number of previously unknown or at least vastly unrecognized genders, and respect them all – after all the sexual preferences of the next person are definitely none of my business (unless perhaps if I’m their current target).
Still I fail to see how mentioning even indirectly the gender of someone bitten by a shark should be regarded as a capital sin, while raping publicly the English syntax shouldn’t.
But perhaps that’s just me growing old…
P.S.: This post may be outdated due to the time it took me to click busses, hydrants, crosswalks, cars, traffic lights and whatnot, and curse Cloudflare accordingly
First of all, ‘Their’ and ‘They’ have been used as a singular pronoun and singular possessive respectively in the English language for at least 600 years, from Chaucer to Shakespeare. If it’s good enough for them, it’s certainly good enough for you. Secondly, in regards to the supposed ‘ambiguity’ the journalist explicitly says “the person” (i.e. singular) so even someone only slightly familiar with the language would easily ascertain that only one person was afflicted. In regards to motivation of the journalist, perhaps they merely wanted to protect the privacy of the victim. Is it not often a newspaper policy to protect their subjects’ privacy (unless of course their explicit aim is to expose them). Also, language changes forcibly all the time, for example through standardisation, such as what took place in France and Italy. Furthermore, I would like to ask what exactly you mean by “unless perhaps if I’m their current target” and I find the usage of the word “raping” questionable at the least…
I’m sorry, I must have struck a nerve with you, which wasn’t my intention. Please accept my apologies.
Still some of your points sound pretty strange to me. Let’s see why:
Shakspeare, Goethe, Dante, Cervantes, Burns and many other great names are known for having taken liberties with the language they were using, and at their level of literacy they could well afford it. Yet “quod licet Jovi non licet bovi”, there’s some difference between a great poet and a little journalist.
Certainly – after carefully checking the number of singulars and plurals in the phrase and weighing the possible meanings. Readability is something else though.
Maybe I’m not very bright but I fail to see how mentioning the gender of an unnamed person might violate her/his privacy. After all there are about 4 billions of “he’s”, 4 billions of “she’s” and an unspecified number of in-betweens in the world.
“Standardisation” (a nice synonym for “flattening”) occurs normally for political reasons, and politicians aren’t exactly known for their high cultural level. Weinreich wrote “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy”. Unfortunately I know very well what I’m talking about, as my own mother tongue was “standardized” to death not long ago.
Please try again, maybe reading the entire sentence first. If you still don’t get it, that may mean that you’ve never been subject to improper attention, not even by a slimy priest when you were a child.
You’re probably right, “abusing” would be a better verb, though it would hardly change the general sense.
A clear logical double standard on language changeYou cite Shakespeare and Chaucer to argue that singular “they” is a “natural historical evolution,” but in the same breath, you defend forced, top-down institutional standardization (like in France or Italy). You cannot have it both ways. If language should evolve organically through common usage, then forced style-guide mandates from newsrooms are an unnatural imposition. If forced standardization is acceptable, then historical precedents from 600 years ago are irrelevant to the argument.
Flow, rhythm, and cognitive frictionLanguages are meant to be read by human brains, not parsed by syntax compilers. When a sentence crams “they suffered…” and “on their foot” into a single breath, the sudden jump from a seemingly plural possessive to a singular noun creates an unnecessary cognitive stutter. It feels sterile, robotic, and poorly paced—regardless of whether it technically passes a dictionary check.
**A absurd, bad-faith justification regarding “privacy”**Claiming that a journalist hid the victim’s gender to “protect their privacy” is completely detached from reality. The report already disclosed the exact location, the activity, and the nature of the injury. Mentioning that the victim was “a man” or “a woman” among a global population of over 8 billion people poses zero threat of anyone being “doxxed.” Inventing a privacy concern here is just a weak post-hoc excuse for a journalist mechanically submitting to a rigid style guide.
Misunderstanding the context of an online forumThis is a forum for language enthusiasts to vent and banter about clunky prose, not an academic journal peer-reviewing a thesis. Hiding behind polite “tone-policing” to dodge the obvious clumsiness of the sentence misses the entire point of the discussion.
Jeez, I just joined because I’ve been a longtime user of etymonline and just noticed there’s a community… not a great introduction. If @Chiron is going to title a post with a word as inflammatory as “rape” speaking from total ignorance then feign naivete with that dismissive “struck a nerve” comment, I don’t think they belong in a community that values discourse at any level.
Let me try to paraphrase your post, maybe glossing over the gratuitous insults that would add very little to the general sense:
“I noticed just now that there’s a forum here and joined at once because I needed to air my vocal cords. I strongly disapprove of that Chiron who dares not only to use a loaded word to describe what I rightfully regard as correct, but also to pull the leg of another fresh member who is obviously right because he/she/whatever shares my convictions and my writing style. I think that a person who’s beliefs are so different from mine should be kicked out immediately.”
