Buyers want to reduce price of house - house valuation gone up.

davemorton

Just trying to get my head around this they them.  How would you say 'She hit him'?

lookstraightahead

davemorton said:

Just trying to get my head around this they them.  How would you say 'She hit him'?

In a general conversation I would say "they hit them". But it's ok if I'm wrong because I would rather know my algebra. If someone corrects me in normal conversation I would think 'they' needed some lessons in etiquette and good manners and I would quite possibly avoid them for the rest of my life.

Ath_Wat

GDB2222 said:

Ath_Wat said:

GDB2222 said:

Ath_Wat said:

TripleH said:

@julicorn it's taken me this long to master English, my brain hurts when it sees something that it says doesn't look right. I think it was a newspaper article I read about Sam Smith that didn't make sense when I read it.

Although it does make some sense to recycle words than create a new one. 

Using "they" when you are talking about some non specified person you don't know has been standard forever.

"Someone has dropped litter here, I wish they hadn't"

No native English speaker should find that at all odd. Extending that to using it when you do know the person you are referring to shouldn't be too much of a stretch.

If you don’t know who dropped litter, it could be one person, or several. There’s a massive difference between that and knowing that you are talking about a single individual. 

"The planning officer is calling at 3 but they might be a bit late"

That's problematic for you?  What pronoun would you use if you actually don't know what gender a person is because you have no name and have never met them?  You can say "he or she" of course but "they" is perfectly common and has been for years.

If you say 'they', I will lay in some extra chocolate bikkies as there must be a small team coming round. Your example doesn’t need a pronoun, anyway!

Then you are just deliberately blinding yourself to common English usage. That's your choice, of course.  I wonder if you were so appalled by this absolutely common usage a few years ago before it got mixed up with debate about gender identity.  Were you?

Ath_Wat

davemorton said:

Just trying to get my head around this they them.  How would you say 'She hit him'?

It depends, if you have no reason to believe that those people are not happy to use those pronouns you say "she hit him".  If you know one of other prefers "they", you use "they" for that person.  If all you know is that one human hit another human, you could certainly say "they hit them", which is of course of no more or less use than "he hit him" is.  

GDB2222

Ath_Wat said:

GDB2222 said:

Ath_Wat said:

GDB2222 said:

Ath_Wat said:

TripleH said:

@julicorn it's taken me this long to master English, my brain hurts when it sees something that it says doesn't look right. I think it was a newspaper article I read about Sam Smith that didn't make sense when I read it.

Although it does make some sense to recycle words than create a new one. 

Using "they" when you are talking about some non specified person you don't know has been standard forever.

"Someone has dropped litter here, I wish they hadn't"

No native English speaker should find that at all odd. Extending that to using it when you do know the person you are referring to shouldn't be too much of a stretch.

If you don’t know who dropped litter, it could be one person, or several. There’s a massive difference between that and knowing that you are talking about a single individual. 

"The planning officer is calling at 3 but they might be a bit late"

That's problematic for you?  What pronoun would you use if you actually don't know what gender a person is because you have no name and have never met them?  You can say "he or she" of course but "they" is perfectly common and has been for years.

If you say 'they', I will lay in some extra chocolate bikkies as there must be a small team coming round. Your example doesn’t need a pronoun, anyway!

Then you are just deliberately blinding yourself to common English usage. That's your choice, of course.  I wonder if you were so appalled by this absolutely common usage a few years ago before it got mixed up with debate about gender identity.  Were you?

I'm not phased by gender issues, and I'm in favour of inventing a new word so as to keep everyone happy. 

Ath_Wat

GDB2222 said:

Ath_Wat said:

GDB2222 said:

Ath_Wat said:

GDB2222 said:

Ath_Wat said:

TripleH said:

@julicorn it's taken me this long to master English, my brain hurts when it sees something that it says doesn't look right. I think it was a newspaper article I read about Sam Smith that didn't make sense when I read it.

Although it does make some sense to recycle words than create a new one. 

Using "they" when you are talking about some non specified person you don't know has been standard forever.

"Someone has dropped litter here, I wish they hadn't"

No native English speaker should find that at all odd. Extending that to using it when you do know the person you are referring to shouldn't be too much of a stretch.

If you don’t know who dropped litter, it could be one person, or several. There’s a massive difference between that and knowing that you are talking about a single individual. 

"The planning officer is calling at 3 but they might be a bit late"

That's problematic for you?  What pronoun would you use if you actually don't know what gender a person is because you have no name and have never met them?  You can say "he or she" of course but "they" is perfectly common and has been for years.

If you say 'they', I will lay in some extra chocolate bikkies as there must be a small team coming round. Your example doesn’t need a pronoun, anyway!

Then you are just deliberately blinding yourself to common English usage. That's your choice, of course.  I wonder if you were so appalled by this absolutely common usage a few years ago before it got mixed up with debate about gender identity.  Were you?

I'm not phased by gender issues, and I'm in favour of inventing a new word so as to keep everyone happy. 

So do you accept  that using "they" for the singular in cases such as I have outlined has been common English usage for many years?

Since the 14th century, according to Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

F37A

it hasn't gone up by 20k that's just the ea telling you lies. Prices coming down.

lookstraightahead

Op, what did you do in the end? 

Sarah1Mitty2

F37A said:

it hasn't gone up by 20k that's just the ea telling you lies. Prices coming down.

Are you seeing evidence of this, my experience at the moment is that some people are finding it harder to get mortgages than they might have 6 or 12 months ago.

Richiem1987

Prices are not coming down, but starting to slow. Prices will only come down when there a surplus of property on the market, and that won't happen for a fair while. When we start seeing more reposession threads on here, then that would be a good indicator that prices are about to drop