Books

Singular they has been part of the English language since the 14th century.

seriously, when i see questions like OP, my instinct is to be like 'because you're a dumbass'.

but usually it's because their a prescriptive, and they think their use of their language at this particular time, is and always was the only legitimate form of it. and all past or future uses, including their own, are faulty and wrong.

god i remember being in like 5th or 6th grade and arguling about the colloqual use of 'they' with my teachers and getting failed. then in college i got 'lectured' about using 'he' as a pronoun for a singular person was sexist and awful you must use 'he/she' no matter how stupid and weird that looks. and now if you don't use 'they' you're awful because he/she is binary exclusivity or something.

and i bet in 10 years it will be different, yet again, and people will tell you whichever of the previous pronouns or singular pronoun you use are 'highly problematic' because it's not whatever what people have deemed to be 'least problematic'. as if it really matters that fucking much, especially compared to the actual broader themes of this novel.

Bodine (1975) – Androcentrism in Prescriptive Grammar

Excerpt of AI-generated findings:

Though published in 1975, Bodine’s landmark paper relies heavily on field data and structural analyses of English third-person singular sex-indefinite pronouns conducted during the late 1960s (specifically citing frameworks from Postal, 1969). Bodine categorizes this phenomenon into two main types:

• Sex-unknown: e.g., "Who dropped their ticket?"

• Mixed-sex, distributive: e.g., "Anyone can do it if they try hard enough."

Bodine notes that despite two centuries of intense prescriptive efforts by educators to enforce the generic "he", singular "they" remained the dominant colloquial and written choice for nonspecific referents throughout the 1960s.

Actual abstract from that article:

Abstract

This paper demonstrates that prior to the beginning of the prescriptive grammar movement in English, singular ‘they’ was both accepted and widespread. It is argued that the prescriptive grammarians' attack on singular ‘they’ was socially motivated, and the specific reasons for their attack are discussed. By analogy with socially motivated changes in second person pronouns in a variety of European languages, it is suggested that third person pronoun usage will be affected by the current feminist opposition to sex-indefinite ‘he’ – particularly since the well-established alternative, singular ‘they’, has remained widespread in spoken English throughout the two and a half centuries of its ‘official’ proscription. Finally, the implications of changes in third person singular, sex-indefinite pronouns for several issues of general interest within linguistics are explored. (Language change, sex roles and language, language attitudes, language planning, prescriptive grammar, pronouns.)

Considering he forgot women needed to exist for a species to work, I'm not so sure that was intentional.

She was already criticizing the generic „he“ while writing the book. It probably wouldn’t be bothering me so much if there weren’t entire passages debating it every few chapters without mentioning the possibility of the singular „they“.

it only works in passive constructions.

'one bites the dog' is a legit sentence, but in English it is passive/detached/non-agenic. one is not actively biting the dog here and now, it is a statement of possibility or frequency.

that construction works in other languages, for sure though. because they aren't english and their use of 'one' does not have the same non-agentic interpretation. but that isn't how english works, formally or colloquially. one is not a nominative pronoun in english, but it's legitimate in dative or accustive cases, if it's replacing him/her/it.

Interesting read, thanks for sharing. That does put things into perspective, though I still disagree with her on some things.

The singular "they" predates the existence of the USA. By several centuries. The first known written attestation to it dates back to the late 14th century. It was probably in common spoken use long before even that.

"They" was not, in short, "always" a plural pronoun.

That’s not correct.

This use of singular they had emerged by the 14th century, about a century after the plural they.

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

When my kid was still young enough to want me to, I would regularly read stories at bedtime, and one that we did was Adam-2 by Alistair Chisholm - and in that there's a non-binary character who uses "ze" and "hir" pronouns.

Took me quite a while to get used to it, even though I was reading direct from the page. Was quite effective though, once I got past my brain's hesitation.

To the best of my knowledge it would be correct to say that English language style guides at the time treated they/them as strictly plural, but that was actually a more recent change (ie, within the last century or so). Singular they existed for centuries, only to fall out of style with the increasing formalization of the English language. It's use today is not a modern invention, but a return to its original usage.

So yes, Le Guin was probably taught that it is not proper to use it as a singular, and that's how anyone alive at that time would have been taught to use it. But that's not the same thing as saying it was "always" singular.

They bothers me for that reason. It obfuscates the conversation. Makes me feel like Abbot and Costello. Almost every conversation about my daughters non binary friends requires clarification about who we're talking about and usually we revert to calling everyone by name. I'm all for personal expression and everything, but I wish we picked a new word.