Today's Mini English lesson is about singular they.
I'm going to give you three examples.
In each example, can you find the mistake?
Example number one.
I have a Chinese friend who speaks perfect English.
Wow, how did she learn it?
Did you spot the mistake?
It was 'she'.
Why are you so sure that my friend is female?
The correct sentence would be
Wow! How did they learn it?
Example number two.
Oh no, somebody has forgotten his umbrella.
Did you see the mistake?
This time it was 'his'.
How do you know if the owner of the umbrella is male or not?
If you use his, you're saying that the owner must be male.
So the correct word to use is their.
Oh no, someone has forgotten their umbrella.
And example number three.
A good boss explains what he wants, so his employees can understand him.
This time there were three mistakes.
He, his and him.
If you use a sentence like this, you're saying that all bosses are male,
which just isn't true.
So the correct sentence would be
A good boss explains what they want so their employees understand them.
All these examples contain variations on the same mistake,
which is that they're not using the singular they.
This could be the subject pronoun they,
the object pronoun them
and the possessive their.
You've probably learned about they for plurals,
for groups of people or objects.
And that's correct.
But you might not have learned about singular they.
We use this after words like everybody,
somebody, nobody.
Even though these words are singular, the pronoun we would use would be they.
We also use it if we don't know the gender of the person or if the gender is not important.
And non-binary people often use singular they because they're not comfortable
with he or she.
There was a time in English when people used he to refer to general people.
For example, in this sentence, 'Everyone worked according to his capacity,'
which is from George Orwell's Animal Farm.
But now that sentence sounds old-fashioned and a little bit strange,
and it excludes all of the people on the farm who were not male.
When you say this sentence, it's like the only people who worked were male,
and that's not true in the story.
And actually, even at the time, it was not necessary to use he
because the history of singular they is very long.
The first written example of singular they in English is ...
drum roll please ...
1375. That's six hundred and fifty years ago.
And it's in a medieval poem called Willem and the Werewolf.
I'm not going to quote it because it's in Middle English,
and I don't speak Middle English.
But I'll give you a more recent quote.
Here's an example from 1594.
And every one to rest themselves betook.
There we have everyone and then
the reflexive pronoun themselves, which shows that this was already
common usage in English over four hundred years ago.
And that's a quote from a writer who you might have heard of.
HIs name is William Shakespeare.
To give you another, slightly more modern quote, here's one from 1813.
You might recognize it if you're a fan of historical romance.
To be sure, you knew no actual good of me,
but nobody thinks of that when they fall in love.
That was a quote from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice,
from near the end of the novel when Elizabeth Bennet finally agrees to marry Mr. Darcy
because he stops being so annoying.
So singular they is really useful and really common
and it has existed for centuries.
The next time that you read a book or watch a film in English,
see if you can find some examples.
Anybody who wants to speak accurate and inclusive English
will make sure they use singular they.
And even an old-fashioned person who tells you that they isn't singular,
will use it themselves when they're not paying attention.
Bye.