Because they/them was originally only plural.

So, "these are my partners, they make me happy." Using the plural: more than one partner.
vs "This is my partner, he/she/xi/han makes me happy." Using the singular: one partner.

Because English's gender-neutral third-person-singular pronoun of "it" has become associated with the negative connotation of "not a person, only for objects" (which wasn't historically true, it used to be commonly used for people when you didn't want to specify gender), it has been lately rejected in favor of using the third-person-plural pronoun.
Which has never, in English, been gendered at all. But has always, naturally enough, been grammatically plural instead of singular.


So, many people are caught by it. Because the grammatical structures of verbs change for plural vs singular, and in your examples, a plural is being used as a singular.


The same phenomenon also happened before in English, when the second person plural pronoun ("you") started to get used in place of the second person singular pronoun ("thou").
And the grammar changed for that, too....
In the phrase "You are", the verb "to be" is using the plural form, "are". Even though in modern times the phrase "you are" might refer to a single person, the grammatical form is still using the plural, because it used to be "thou art". "Art" instead of "are" because "art" was singular and "are" was plural for the verb "to be".

So we're doing the same thing again now, with the third person pronouns this time instead of the second person pronouns.


And people who learned the grammar for singular vs plural with third person pronouns tend to find that what you quoted strikes them as grammatically wrong, because you are mixing singular and plural grammatical forms.


"My friend likes metal music, they say it calms them." Is a mix of singular and plural grammar.
Separating it out, you have instead either:
"My friend likes metal music, he/she/xi/han says it calms him/her/xin/hem." For singular, one friend.
or "My friends like metal music, they say it calms them." for plural, multiple friends.

"Jessi says they had a good day today" also mixes singular and plural.
"Jessi says he/she/xi/han had a good day today". = Just Jessi. One person. Singular grammar.
vs.
"Jessi say they had a good day today." = A system, using the name Jessi for the group/body. Plural. All of the personalities had a good day.

Make more sense?

Transitions are always hard, and this is a big grammatical shift for English, which isn't exactly a highly inflected language to begin with.

I loved your exposition, Akili Li!


Anyway, as much as I love being gramatically correct, we must also remember that languages are evolving entities that at one point or another will change.
And sometimes they must be pushed to their limits and beyound to force a change in the thinking paradigms of a society.


I'm Spanish, and Spanish is a completely gendered language. All nouns (and adjectives, and articles) have a gender.
Instead of "cat" you say "gato" or "gata", depending whether it's male or female. And things with no sex also have a gender assigned. "Foot" is male, while "hand" is female.
So we are having a bit of trouble transitioning to neutral pronouns...

Yes, it's the transitions that are always tricky, because some people are still thinking of the older forms as "correct" and some are thinking of the newer forms as "correct", and of course when it isn't 100% clear what the newer form will end up being, it gets further confused with more groups of people defining different things as "correct".

I've been trying to mentally shift into thinking of "they/them" as being plural in grammatical form, but with the option of being "one or more", just like our current "you".

It's quite hard for me though, because in my personal life I sometimes actually still use the "thou/thee" forms instead of always "you".

But I belive in practice and hard work! Must keep trying!

I guess?
For me it's easier in English than in Spanish.
I don't know why.
I guess because it's only an small shift. And because it's easier to write (alternatives in Spanish are quite messy to write).

That makes sense.

So in Spanish is the current change actually trying to introduce a whole new "gender-neutral" option? Or more to detach the connotations of personal gender from the grammatical gender forms?

My mother tongue is French and for me too it's easier use gender neutral pronouns in English than in French. Like for Spanish I guess, French is extremely gendered and it makes it messy. I honestly don't have any idea how you're supposed to talk in a gender neutral way in French, writing I get, speaking is a whole another problem. (Which is made harder by the fact I'm not in France and thus don't speak French on a regular basis)

Somehow, Japanese as a language also feels kinda gender neutral if you make the effort. Some of the speaking habits can be heavily gendered but you can do without pretty easily. Problem is that some people have a very strict idea of how a woman or a man are supposed to talk/soud-like and some don't hesitate to say it.

I wonder if it's always easier to make a change in languages which aren't the one you learned first?
Since the learning process was probably more conscious and purposeful to begin with, changing them later would use the same format, and be incorporated at the same rate.
But with your first language, you learned it before you were old enough to make any conscious choices, so the habits are deeply ingrained and harder to change.


It's just a theory -anyone have any opinions on it? Does it sound plausible?

ArmyAunt wrote:I'm older than most folks here, and they/them as singular is very awkward for me. I have been trying to learn Spanish, and I have absolutely no idea how to get anyone or anything to be gender-neutral.

Do you think it would be easier to learn a new gender-neutral pronoun for third person singular? Or would it be just as hard as transitioning they/them into a "plural grammar, can refer to singular" just like we use "you" now?