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The English Generic ’You’ | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5227 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 9 of 22 10 March 2012 at 7:31pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Why not specify gender when talking about one person? There is no such thing as a sexless person in that sense ;)
Personally, I don't see a problem with the use of generic he, writing s/he or an equivalent for the first instance in a text, or even the use of singular they -- as long as it doesn't imply a mid-sentence change of grammatical number. That I find disturbing. Just use two sentences. Then again, I'm no Composition professor (note on epicene "they" towards the end). "Singular they" in WikiPedia. As for the original question...
Well, I am quite the prescriptive type, and that 'generic you' is how I was taught English works, so I'm not sure it's recent. I'd like to see an example that shows the difference I'm presumably missing between that 'generic you' and normal 'you' in the plural. Latest edit: fixed the links. Edited by mrwarper on 11 March 2012 at 12:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| B-Tina Tetraglot Senior Member Germany dragonsallaroun Joined 5528 days ago 123 posts - 218 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Polish | Message 10 of 22 10 March 2012 at 10:08pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Interestingly enough, there are some dialects in Germany that use "Du" instead of "man", for example: interviewer: "Wie haben Sie den Gegner doch noch besiegt?" - tennis player: "Naja, Du musst in so einer Situation eben die Nerven behalten."
(How did you manage to defeat the opponent?" "Well, you need to hold your nerve.") Things really start getting confusing when a dialect speaker uses the generic "Du" with a person with whom he's actually at formal terms... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 11 of 22 11 March 2012 at 9:58am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Does anybody know how old the generic "you" is? Often in these things there's an illusion of recency. Once something is decided to be improper, people will think it's new (and from America).
Take for example the singular "they". Prescriptivists often believe it's relatively recent, when in fact it dates back at least to around the year 1400.
They'll also often think it's a sign of a bad writer, in which case they can't be great fans of William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Jane Austen, C.S Lewis, Lewis Carroll, Walt Whitman, George Elliot, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain or the King James Bible, who all made use of the singular "they".
Now, I hope that settles the question of the singular "they". However, it seems it's harder to find information on the general "you". How long has it been used? When did it start to become unacceptable in formal writing, or wasn't it ever formally correct? Unless I see some sources, I'm not going to believe it's recent, as these things seldom are. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ygangerg Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5319 days ago 100 posts - 140 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, French Studies: German | Message 12 of 22 11 March 2012 at 11:45am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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There is decidedly a time and place for "proper" language—or at least agreed-upon language. However, I think the prescriptivists need to choose their battles, lest they waste their breath.
Pronouns are part of the fundamental structure of a language. We call this type of word closed-class. They're vertebrae. Having less of them than Hebrew or Aramaic is not a communicative disadvantage. Chinese is quite expressive with no salient case—even in the pronouns! With only seven bones, a giraffe's neck is quite flexible. Closed-class words are—in English—words like pronouns, prepositions, and articles. Inherently, you can't just coin them (and expect to get away with it). Nor can you grasp them too tightly and expect to hold on forever. When a prescriptivist sees these changes happening, they freak. Let it go. Imagine the “incorrect” transformations that had to occur for the sacred learned Latin to become the famously graceful French! Let it go, I say. Edited by Ygangerg on 11 March 2012 at 12:03pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5566 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 13 of 22 11 March 2012 at 12:27pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Before believing (as I was told) that the generic You was of recent origin I should
have checked my copy of the Oxford English Dictionary (I have the one that comes in microfilm sized print and a magnifying glass). The generic You actually dates back, according to the OED, to the late sixteenth century and has been used consistently from then on. So it is not at all a recent development, even in writing. This reminds me of something Mary Pennington, a seventeenth century Londoner, wrote in the 1650s about first hearing of the Quakers (who originated out of the north west of England) and their use of 'thee and thou' instead of 'you' for the second person singular: ‘I heard of a new people, called Quakers. . . For a year or more after I heard of them in the north, I heard nothing of their way, except that they used thee and thou . . . I remember that I thought it very ridiculous, so minded neither the people nor the[ir] book[s], except that it was to scoff at them.' 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 22 11 March 2012 at 2:45pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I consider generic "you" universally irritating in both informal writing and speech, and I'm deeply worried when I see a bad habit from abroad penetrate into my own native language where we already have a number af tactics to deal with the concept of neutral persons. But we all have to live with generic "you" now where it has become part and parcel of the English language, just as we have to live with tax, lawyers, measles and common cold.
Why specify gender when it is irrelevant? A generic person is essentially sexless, but concrete persons have a gender. However when you don't know the person you are essentially speaking about a generic person, and then the lack of sense in the English treatment of generic persons hits you like a hammer. The only solution would be to go back to "one", but I don't see that coming. Edited by Iversen on 11 March 2012 at 3:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5227 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 15 of 22 11 March 2012 at 7:04pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I said that in jest ;) No one said you have to, unless the language makes you do it because it lacks a feature you'd want to use. I don't think there are that many languages that have a singular, neutral personal pronoun that applies to people*. Anyway, I don't see why other people make such a fuss about this. If you're really concerned about your audience being mislead about the relevance you give to it or something, it's incredibly easy to say something along the lines of "a person..." (so it can be a man or a woman) and "... he or she" (or otherwise make clear just this once it's not really relevant) and be done with it.
Relatively speaking. I don't know any members' mothers here, nor even how many of them there are, yet I'm 100% sure they're all women.
* Another solution (besides the ones we've listed so far) would be to use "it" which is both singular and sex-neutral but I bet feminists and the like wouldn't be happy with it either and they'd prefer to use clumsy, supposedly wit-showing formulas instead of simple solutions just as nobodies like William F*. Shakespeare found five hundred years ago. Back to the main topic, however, I was really concerned by Iversen's intense reaction about this 'generic you'
because it really makes me think I'm missing something here. There's no difference between formal and informal "you" in English, just as there's no difference between masculine and feminine or singular and plural "you", so I fail to see what the problem with addressing somebody who may not even be there as "you" is. Somebody mentioned "generic du" in German, that distinguishes between the informal "du" and the formal "Sie", just like Spanish has "tú" and "usted". Now that makes me twitch and generally just go "what the dickens?!", for example when some moron translates a program into Spanish and it displays messages addressing everyone (read: me!) like we're pals or something. However, I don't see how that's a problem in a language that doesn't have a means to separate formal and informal addressing. Could anyone please tell me what is eluding me? Edited by mrwarper on 11 March 2012 at 7:08pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ygangerg Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5319 days ago 100 posts - 140 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, French Studies: German | Message 16 of 22 11 March 2012 at 7:38pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I'm with you on this one, mrwarper. From my perspective as a native speaker of English (as well as a teacher of said language), it's frustrating to have the rest of the world criticizing the arbitrary linguistic structure of your mother tongue. You can rant all you want; it is what it is.
Don't wish for pigs to fly. Get a parakeet. Or, I don't know, learn Esperanto or something. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em (which, beautiful phrase, happens to implement the generic 'you' and the neutral 'they'!) :p #If one is unable to beat another, then may one join him/her...? I don't think so. Edited by Ygangerg on 11 March 2012 at 7:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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