Merry Christmas

Okay. I have a soft spot for Jacob Collier and his musical eccentricities and Tori Kelly is one the best singers in the world of pop music. It's a winning combo. Admittedly not everyone's cup of tea. Still... Merry Christmas.

The word of the year 2019

The holiday season is bearing down on us but, instead of going full-on Christmassy, I've decided to geek out a little. Is that alright? I thought so. Let's talk vocabulary for a while (yes, I intentionally left out the preposition).

Okay. Here's the thing: my beloved Merriam-Webster Dictionary has chosen "they" as the Word of the Year 2019. Why? Because it has acquired a new (additional) meaning. Don't panic. "They" is still a personal pronoun we use to conjugate verbs in the third person plural. I just so happens that it can also the "used to refer to a single person whose gender identity is non-binary". Now, this is the novelty.

Recently a number of high-profile individuals have challenged traditional nomenclatures that class people into two genders (male and female) on the grounds that they don't feel completely comfortable with the corresponding definitions of masculinity and femininity. I suppose that someone's gender identity is a private matter largely based on self-perception. Consequently one might well argue that it has to do with the field of Psychology (how do I feel about myself? how do I present myself to the world?). Nevertheless, it does overlap with Linguistics... Think about it.

How should we refer to a person that doesn't feel represented by those labels? Can we impose our term upon them? Isn't gender identity a strictly private issue? What happens when the very biological definition is unclear (remember South African athlete Caster Semenya)? What if an Armenian citizen claimed that they don't feel Armenian? Is a nationality label comparable to gender descriptions? Haven't we altered racial types many times already? Are pronouns untouchable? Do they actually change over time? Is this gender thing only a fad?

Needless to say, this debate has sparked all kinds of controversy. Just a few months ago an educational BBC film came under fire for implicitly recognizing “over 100 gender identities”. That film went even further than Facebook, which (so the story goes) offers over 50 gender options. Those gender lists may be extreme examples of an otherwise serious and reasonable debate. In the United Kingdom, for instance, an organization as prestigious as the Royal College of General Practitioners recognizes six genders. Many on-line forms offer three options, namely male, female and non-binary (the LGTBQ+ community might prefer the term genderqueer, but that is basically the same as non-binary).


So at this point we should probably leave aside the number of genders that may or may not exist and consider the linguistic side of the issue. Why? Because a specific form of address ceases to be about a person’s self-perception and becomes linguistic when it effectively affects how “the others” are supposed to refer to people. No one knows what sustained usage will ultimately sanction but, for the time being, we simply cannot ignore that certain people in the English-speaking world have already chosen to go by “they”. Singer Sam Smith (of James Bond fame) has publicly declared that they do not identify with either of the traditional genders. He's not alone.


Whatever your stance on the subject might be, the very fact that the Merriam-Webster Dictionary decided to include the de-pluralized form of “they” as its Word of the Year 2019 speaks volumes of the how seriously the issue has been taken.

Okay. How is all this relevant to you, learners of English? Well, for starters you should be aware that sometimes the pronoun "they" in its singular form is just necessary. That's why, without batting an eye, we say "somebody left their umbrella in the classroom". Just remember that only some decades ago that was a bizarre sentence. Now it's the done thing. The innovation comes now. You read in the papers that "Sam Smith is going to perform at the Royal Albert Hall. They are excited about it". Personally, I feel a bit weird about the grammar in phrases such as "they are my co-worker" but it's probably because it's new. Have you already forgotten how unusual the word "jueza" used to feel in Spanish?

I know what some of you might be thinking. This is just another stunt pushed by the Far Left. Funnily enough, the search for a genderless pronoun is not new at all. Attempts to come up with a gender-neutral pronoun hark back to 1858, when the pronoun thon was first proposed by American attorney Charles Crozat Converse. I don't think he had a queer agenda. As for the alleged craziness of introducing a new meaning to an old pronoun, I'm sorry to break the news to you but "you" was originally a plural pronoun. The singular forms in the 17th century were thou (nominative) and thee (accusative). So yes. Pronouns do change their meanings.

Anyhow, all this pronoun kerfuffle makes me think of that scene in the movie Chasing Amy (1997) in which a gay girl (Amy), who has fallen in love with a man, refuses to reveal his gender in a conversation with her lesbian friends. At one point, one of them asks: "why are you playing the pronoun game?" The answer lies in the abovementioned Merriam-Webster Dictionary, to be exact in the c sense of the third definition of "they", which goes like this: "used to refer to a single person whose gender is intentionally not revealed". As you see, this definition has nothing to do with gender identity or the LGTBQ+ lobby. It has to do with the (sometimes) convenient need to hide a person's gender in a conversation. You may want to be discreet about your social life and just say "last night I went out with a friend". In Spanish you would have to state whether your friend was male or female (i.e. anoche salí con una amiga). In English, though, you can keep the mystery... until you need a pronoun.

So, in 2019, is it playful or bizarre to use the genderless they?

Merry Christmas everyone!

N.B. More information on this thought-provoking article.