A-net ran out of pronouns

[nosleepdemon.1368]

"Caithe is having problems with Destiny's Edge because they have been treating her badly. Their new opinion of her is her own fault as she betrayed them for her own benefit with little regard for them and their feelings."

 

That text features more than one topic of conversation (Caithe and Destiny's Edge), so being explicit is helpful.

 

"Caithe crosses their arms."

 

'Her' is not required here, as there is no mistaking whom it was that crossed their arms. If I recall, Sylvari don't actually have a gender either. Finally, from a programming standpoint "their" works for all possible combinations of character race and gender.

[Panda.1967]

Given that to my knowledge there isn't a single emote in the game that acknowledges your gender... they probably used a simple text replacer for emotes. Since the emote system simply replaces text from a list, there is no check for gender, and it's far simpler to just put "their" inplace of a gender check function.

[Vagrant.7206]

Fun fact: You can use the royal "we" to refer to yourself.

[del.4068]

This discussion is bizarre.

 

You see, I'm not a native English speaker, and I wasn't very good at grammar even though that was what we were taught heavily. I learned how to speak, write and talk in English later by novels, movies, any other British/American content. The use of "they, them, their" is not a new thing that some people suddenly came up with. It has been in English, it has been in literature, in tv shows, in movies, old and new both. I know this because that's how and where I learned it from. Language evolves, as well as grammar, and people should just keep it up with it.

 

Here is few examples from dictionary.com, I believe someone already shared one of these in **their** post;

 

(they/them/their used with a singular indefinite pronoun or singular noun antecedent in place of the definite masculine his or the definite feminine her)

 

* **[they]**

* _Whoever is of voting age, whether they are interested in politics or not, should vote._

* _A person may apply only if they are over 21._

* _They have been an actor since childhood._

 

---

 

* **[them]**

* _If you know anyone looking for a job, tell them to contact me._

* _If a patient asks a question, you should answer them honestly._

 

---

 

* **[their]**

* _Someone left their book on the table._

* _It's good for the teacher to have high expectations for their students._

[Ashantara.8731]

> @Rauderi.8706 said:

> I would have preferred either his/her by the character's created gender, or some gender-neutral pronoun.

 

"They" is the gender-neutral pronoun in English. Learn to live with it, they are not going to change a whole language for you. ;)

 

However, I agree that it should be possible for the engine to determine the character's gender.

[DietPepsi.4371]

I'm surprised some people were still claiming 'They' is incorrect grammar even after I posted two sources that show that 'They'(singular) is a thing, and why have people brought political correctness into this?

[Sutrebor.4217]

I'm surprised this discussion is still going. =) I rescind any claims (real, inferred, or assumed) about bad, or wrong , or incorrect.

Nonetheless, using "their" still (in a "much less than 2 page" minor way) bugs me if used with a singular gender specific (per game set-up) proper name.

 

"Susan raises their hand." or "John taps their foot." just look stupid to me. No offense intended to anyone who thinks it looks and sounds spectacular or if it indeed is perfectly correct usage. .

Simple solution: I won't use that emote. I'm easygoing. Done deal. ;O) Now, back to waiting for PoF!

Cheers all!

Sut

 

 

 

[Oglaf.1074]

> @"Just a flesh wound.3589" said:

> I'm putting my vote in for its.

>

> Pat crossed its arms.

>

> Might as well make everyone equally unhappy. ^.^

 

No we're not objects. "It" is for objects, not people.

 

Stop objectifying me.

[Menadena.7482]

> @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> Grammarians disagree about the best way to indicate an unknown gender.

> * Traditionalists insist that we use "he", unless it must be a female.

> * 20th Century modernists insist on using "one", even if the person is known (but the gender is not).

> * Many believe it's okay to adopt similar practices from other languages and use 'they'

>

> Thus it's acceptable to write:

> * Pat crossed his arms

> * Pat crossed her arms

> * Pat crossed their arms.

>

> Even though I'm a big proponent of 'they', I agree that the third option looks awkward & I try to avoid it by rewriting.

 

The problem is highly language dependent though. If you are using something like French everything has a gender .... even if the gender assigned to the word does not match the usage. Then you have languages like Finnish, which do not have an equivalent for gendered pronouns at all. English is a hodge podge of whatever was needed at the time, so it makes sense we would have quite a few grammar issues.

[Menadena.7482]

> @Rauderi.8706 said:

> > @"Just a flesh wound.3589" said:

> > I'm putting my vote in for its.

> >

> > Pat crossed its arms.

> >

> > Might as well make everyone equally unhappy. ^.^

>

> That would make me unhappy? :frown:

>

> Nah. :smile:

 

Have someone use 'it' at you when you have expressed a preference, like in the character creator. Yes, being addressed as an inanimate object will be somewhat irksome.

[Lokki.1092]

> @Oglaf.1074 said:

> > @"Just a flesh wound.3589" said:

> > I'm putting my vote in for its.

> >

> > Pat crossed its arms.

> >

> > Might as well make everyone equally unhappy. ^.^

>

> No we're not objects. "It" is for objects, not people.

>

> Stop objectifying me.

 

The dog wagged it's tail? :)

[Chrome.5362]

They should just write it all in the 3rd person. "Jim crosses Jim's arms." B)

[Amante.8109]

Language evolves. Keep up or get out of the way.

[Amante.8109]

> @witcher.3197 said:

> Anet's been well known for political correctness in recent years and I think it's starting to leak more and more into the game. We can select male/female on character creation but the game can't acknowledge our charatcer's gender in situations like this..? Nonsense.

If you want to find something bad enough, you will.

[Chrome.5362]

But seriously, there is zero chance that this was done b/c of a programming issue. Modern day programming languages store related pieces of data in groups (objects), and in the case of data related to a character, you don't get much more related than "name" and "gender". So if they can get your character's name, they can easily get their gender too.