First part of my response to Krystal's post found here
Thou there is nothing wrong with taking 'proper grammar' seriously, I think that it is important to recognize that grammar is entirely of our own construct and thereby fluid. Grammar can change, refudiate, for instance, is now a word, thanks to the lovely Sarah Palin.
Some great writers of the past have used the singular they. Shakespeare used singular they; There's not a man I meet but doth salute me / As if I were their well-acquainted friend (Comedy of Errors, Act IV, Scene 3) or "Arise; one knocks. / ... / Hark, how they knock!" (Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene 3).
After looking into it, which involved reading over some LGBT pages in French and Spanish, I have found that many people still prefer the gendered they (ils or ellos) over the singular he or she. Though, not all of them find that agreeable. In Spanish text recently, there has been an upsurge of the use of at-signs as in ell@s, or æ as in ellæs. Most HTML editors allow you to use the < / small> tag to make it reasonably sized compared to the rest of the text. There are still problems and it would be best for those languages, I think, to create a new pronoun.
The problem is that trying to create your own rules in grammar or have grammatical errors in what you say leads to confusion and can change the meaning of a text.
ReplyDeleteLet's eat, Grandpa! Vs. Let's eat Grandpa!