• jackr@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 days ago

    You might want to work on your grammar, my friend.

    'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother, since nature makes them partial, should o’erhear the speech."— Shakespeare, Hamlet (1599);

    Caesar: “No, Cleopatra. No man goes to battle to be killed.” Cleopatra: “But they do get killed” —Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra (1901);

    In an 1881 letter, Emily Dickinson wrote “Almost anyone under the circumstances would have doubted if [the letter] were theirs, or indeed if they were themself.”

    George Eliot (1859) – Adam Bede: “It is too late to spare anyone when they are dead.”

    • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      Cleaopatra is clearly refencing a plural group.

      And “Anyone” as a noun is an undetermined number and is often treated as plural. All of these are referencing an ambiguous potential-group, not a context-explicit singular individual.

      • jackr@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 days ago

        So you would say that when referencing a singular specific person of undeterminate gender in the third person we should use is? Because I am quite sure that, if that has ever been correct at all, it certainly isn’t now. As per merriam webster: A student was found with a knife and a BB gun in their backpack Monday, district spokeswoman Renee Murphy confirmed. The student, whose name has not been released, will be disciplined according to district policies, Murphy said. They also face charges from outside law enforcement, she said.— Olivia Krauth

        E: also, “Each member [of the women’s touch football team] found something they could improve on in the future.”

        Dalby (Queensland) Herald (Nexis) 21 October 16, 2014 (as quoted in the oxford english dictionary)

        Contradicts you as well unless you’d like to argue that “each man are fighting for himself” is correct.

        • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
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          22 hours ago

          If you used any other pronoun other than “they” it would be is and faces

          The student also faces charges. S/He faces charges. They face charges. - this is only because we’re conditioned based on they being plural.

          • jackr@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            21 hours ago

            Yeah? The pronoun is what causes it to be plural. This is how the grammar works. I don’t understand what your argument is here.

      • Soup@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        The Cleopatra quote is talking about individuals; Individuals which we know make up a group, but individuals nonetheless.

        “Anyone” is a similar concept. You talk about a single person(it’s right there in the word) and apply that condition to however many people. An example in a group of all men would be “anyone may leave the room if he so chooses” and even though it sounds weird, because we heavily favour the singular they, it absolutely works.

        This has strong “everything is a conspiracy when you don’t understand how anything works” vibes. Your lack of understanding shouldn’t have to be everyone else’s problem.

        • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
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          22 hours ago

          I love the straw man interpretations everyone is pulling out of their assholes to try to justify their insane kneejerk reaction to someone using a singular verb to refer to a singular individual (and not an unspecified number of individuals).

          • Soup@lemmy.world
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            9 hours ago

            It’s one of those things that’s never a problem until it might help someone else feel more comfortable and then suddenly it’s this whole thing.