uncertainty prevails

[alex]

I'm really glad we English speakers got rid of our 2nd person formal sometime around 300 years ago.

Strictly speaking, it's the informal form that you English speakers got rid of. 'Thou' was the less formal, more familiar form.

[Greg Nog]

I use thou quite a bit, but only when I'm talking to my cat.

I do wish there was a nice second-person plural in English, though.

[mixed cats]

I wish we had a good singular neuter pronoun

[mixed cats]

I also wish people would respond to this goddamn evite

[Greg Nog]

I wish we had a good singular neuter pronoun

I have argued with coldie on this very board about this!  I am pro-pronoun, he was okay with "they".

[coldforge]

I am indeed ok with 'they'. But I am very strongly in favor of thou/thee, ye/you. Last month I even tried to stir up support for a revival of the forms, but I didn't have any takers. I'm still available, though.

[mixed cats]

I am sort of OK with "they" and do use it, but it feels.. disingenuous? I know some people who use ze/hir, but "hir" is hard to convey outside of read text.

[Greg Nog]

Lately, I've been experimenting with "it", which has the additional advantage of being rather dehumanizing!

[coldforge]

'They' really feels disingenuous? I kind of feel like other people must use 'they' more than they think and not even notice. Like, the sentence, 'If I'm going to go to a doctor, they better be good.' I am pretty sure I hear constructions like that from everyone I speak to.

[Andrew_TSKS]

I'm really glad we English speakers got rid of our 2nd person formal sometime around 300 years ago.

Strictly speaking, it's the informal form that you English speakers got rid of. 'Thou' was the less formal, more familiar form.

I did not know that. Either way, it amounts to the same thing.

[alex]

which is probably why I prefaced my remark with "strictly speaking".

[jm]

Where applicable, I tend to use "one".  It's less false than "they", less clumsy than "he or she", and infinitely less obnoxious than fake-assed words like "hir" or whatever.  I think that's something that carries over from learning German, where there's "man" = "one" (which in turn makes Persian confusing, where "man" = "I").

[elpollodiablo]

I just use "dat jigga"

[Greg Nog]

'They' really feels disingenuous? I kind of feel like other people must use 'they' more than they think and not even notice. Like, the sentence, 'If I'm going to go to a doctor, they better be good.' I am pretty sure I hear constructions like that from everyone I speak to.

I feel like "they" feels righter in your construction above, where the individual in question is hypothetical.  In the case of a definite person, it feels weirder to me:

"I hear Polly's friend is making some awesome potato salad."
"Do they use a lot of mayo in the potato salad?"

[elpollodiablo]

dat jigga uses hell of mayo and a little paprika

[Greg Nog]

Broseph(ine) loves the 'naise

[coldforge]

'They' really feels disingenuous? I kind of feel like other people must use 'they' more than they think and not even notice. Like, the sentence, 'If I'm going to go to a doctor, they better be good.' I am pretty sure I hear constructions like that from everyone I speak to.

I feel like "they" feels righter in your construction above, where the individual in question is hypothetical.  In the case of a definite person, it feels weirder to me:

"I hear Polly's friend is making some awesome potato salad."
"Do they use a lot of mayo in the potato salad?"

That's a good distinction. I don't think 'they' is wrong there, but I can definitely see how it would feel more strained to those less avant-garde and forwarding thinking than I, on linguistic matters. I'd be much more likely to try to make an educated guess about the gender of said friend*.

I'm not gonna let this 'thou' thing go, by the way. My door is still open.

*Much more likely than in the doctor example, that is.

[elpollodiablo]

dat jigga loves linguistics, can't hardly stop dat jigga

[coldforge]

Are you implying that my gender is under doubt?

[jm]

I'm not gonna let this 'thou' thing go, by the way. My door is still open.

I think your door is going to remain open to no effect, resnickforge.  A negligible percentage of the population (that is, not a percentage that could reliably be expressed as "more than zero") cares enough to require the reemergence of a clumsy, antiquated pronoun form, considering there is almost zero confusion ever without it.

[elpollodiablo]

Are you implying that my gender is under doubt?

Just trynna overthrow the gender hegemony with my mouth words

[Greg Nog]

coldie if you like I will seriously start using the informal in conversation with thou.

[coldforge]

With thee, thou meanst.

[elpollodiablo]

OH SNAPPETH

[Greg Nog]

excuse me while i kiss thee thy