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Alicorn comments on The Irrationality Game - Less Wrong
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Literary "everyman" types, not needing to awkwardly dance around the use of gendered personal pronouns when talking about a hypothetical person of no specific traits besides defaults, and probably something I'm not remembering.
How do you do that in English as it is now?
People say things like "Take your average human. He's thus and such." If you want to start a paragraph with "Take your average human" and not use gendered language, you have to say things like "They're thus and such" (sometimes awkward, especially if you're also talking about plural people or objects in the same paragraph) or "Ey's thus and such", which many people don't understand and others don't like.
Alicorn:
I find these invented pronouns awful, not only aesthetically, but also because they destroy the fluency of reading. When I read a text that uses them, it suddenly feels like I'm reading some language in which I'm not fully fluent so that every so often, I have to stop and think how to parse the sentence. It's the linguistic equivalent of bumps and potholes on the road.
After reading one story that used these pronouns, I was sufficiently used to them that they do not impact my reading fluency.
Link?
The story was Alicorn's Damage Report.
I don't have an average human, and I don't think the universe does either. I think there's a lot to be said for not having a mental image of an average human.
Furthermore, since there are nearly equal numbers of male and female humans, gender is trait where the idea of an average human is especially inaccurate.
I think the best substitute is "Take typical humans. They're thus and such." Your average alert listener will be ready to check on just how typical (modal?) those humans are.
Exactly. People make a fuss about a lack of singular nongendered pronouns. The plural nongendered pronouns are right there.
Hmm. It's true, people do, but I think it's getting less common already. Were you asking, then, which of those alternatives the original commenter preferred?
Not really, I'm just pointing out that gendered language isn't a one-sided policy debate. (I favor a combination of "they" and "ey", personally, or creating specific example imaginary people who have genders).
Not sure what you mean about policy, but I think we're pretty far removed from the main point now, and don't actually disagree, so I'm disinclined to argue further. :)
How is "they" any more ambiguous than "you"? Both can easily qualified with "all".
It's not always grammatically feasible or elegant to do so. Also, the singular "you" is much more common than the singular "they," so your readers are more likely to expect it and are prepared for the potential ambiguity.