# Question regarding genderless nouns he/they she/they **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 10, 2021, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-genderless-nouns-he-they-she-they/955825 "2021-12-10T06:22:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Octagon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/2acd7d/32.png) [@Octagon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Octagon)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2021, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-genderless-nouns-he-they-she-they/955825/1 "2021-12-10T06:22:37Z")
I’ve been coming across many articles (especially in archaeology/anthropology) using terms for the gender of a specimen as ‘they’ in the singular. How would they be used in the singular in a conversation when referring to one skeletal fossil (singular male or female)? They is? or They are? What are these genderless pronouns for he and she in French and German? ---
**Author:** ![Octagon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/2acd7d/32.png) [@Octagon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Octagon)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2021, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-genderless-nouns-he-they-she-they/955825/2 "2021-12-10T06:30:30Z")
From Mirriam-Webster _They_ always goes with a plural verb, even when _they_ is referring to a single person: “They are my friend.” ---
**Author:** ![Staggerlee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/staggerlee/32/3134_2.png) [@Staggerlee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Staggerlee)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2021, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-genderless-nouns-he-they-she-they/955825/3 "2021-12-10T07:36:18Z")
In the case of fossils, can’t you say ‘it’? I don’t think the fossil will be offended, they’re notoriously thick-skinned. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2021, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-genderless-nouns-he-they-she-they/955825/4 "2021-12-10T07:47:42Z")
Anthropologists/archaeologists don’t _generally_ deal with fossils, the human remains they study aren’t usually old enough. That’s palaeontology. The reason to use _they_ not _it_ is that we’re at least (usually) certain that they’re _human_ remains. And we don’t refer to humans, even corpses, as _it_, at least non-pejoratively. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2021, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-genderless-nouns-he-they-she-they/955825/5 "2021-12-10T08:40:33Z")
> [@Octagon](#): > > What are these genderless pronouns for he and she in French and German? Don’t know about German, but French simply does not have them in the sense you mean. French does not have “it”, everything is either masculine or feminine, In addition, the gender of the person referred to changes other parts of the sentence, like articles and adjectives. Current attempts to change this have resulted in controversy. > **[Nonbinary pronoun ‘they’ sparks French language debate](https://www.connexionfrance.com/article/French-news/Nonbinary-pronoun-they-sparks-French-language-debate-after-Merriam-Webster-word-of-the-year-nonbinary)** > > A debate has been sparked in France over the lack of an official gender-neutral French word for “they” and “them”, after the pronoun “they” was voted Word of the Year 2019 in the United States. ---
**Author:** ![Octagon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/2acd7d/32.png) [@Octagon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Octagon)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2021, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-genderless-nouns-he-they-she-they/955825/6 "2021-12-10T16:40:26Z")
Perhaps I should have written paleoanthropologist instead of Anthropologists/archaeologists. But the fact remains that articles are online using the term ‘they’ instead of he or she. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2021, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-genderless-nouns-he-they-she-they/955825/7 "2021-12-10T16:48:50Z")
Because sexing skeletons by morphology alone isn’t as reliable as you might think (hence the recent reanalysis of warrior burials as female, [like the Birka one](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birka_female_Viking_warrior)). So better to use the indeterminate pronoun anyway. And then there’s a case [like this Finnish one](https://www.livescience.com/medieval-grave-non-binary-warrior-finland.html), where the person is possibly some sort of nonbinary anyway. And that’s entirely aside from issues of not _imposing_ rigid gender dynamics on people, living _or_ dead. ---
**Author:** ![Octagon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/2acd7d/32.png) [@Octagon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Octagon)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2021, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-genderless-nouns-he-they-she-they/955825/8 "2021-12-10T16:49:46Z")
Mr.Dibble I do respect your point on the issue of using ‘they’ to refer to the remains as being human. ---
**Author:** ![Octagon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/2acd7d/32.png) [@Octagon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Octagon)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2021, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-genderless-nouns-he-they-she-they/955825/9 "2021-12-10T16:52:37Z")
Thanks for that very enlightening reply. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2021, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-genderless-nouns-he-they-she-they/955825/10 "2021-12-10T16:54:45Z")
In case you missed it, I edited it to include another example I was previously unaware of. ---
**Author:** ![Octagon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/2acd7d/32.png) [@Octagon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Octagon)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2021, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-genderless-nouns-he-they-she-they/955825/11 "2021-12-10T21:26:38Z")
Yes I read it. Very interesting. Thanks again. ---
**Author:** ![Mops](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mops/32/16494_2.png) [@Mops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mops)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2021, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-genderless-nouns-he-they-she-they/955825/12 "2021-12-14T21:18:01Z")
In German there isn‘t really an equivalent to the singular ‚they‘ (there are of course some ideas in circulation but nothing that has gained currency). If I wanted to talk about a person the gender of whom is not determined, I‘d probably refer to _die Person_ and use the female grammatical gender as _Person_ is a feminine noun. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2021, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-genderless-nouns-he-they-she-they/955825/13 "2021-12-14T23:52:29Z")
> [@Mops](#): > > If I wanted to talk about a person the gender of whom is not determined, I‘d probably refer to _die Person_ and use the female grammatical gender as _Person_ is a feminine noun. Thank you! That’s the sort of thing I’ve often wondered about. Grammatical gender giving you an out when you don’t have a gender neutral term makes a lot of sense. I think there have been threads in the past asking how other languages deal with this sort of thing, but I don’t remember any saying something like this. They always seem more focused on trying to come up with a gender neutral term or arguing that grammatical male includes gender neutral. ---
**Author:** ![Mops](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mops/32/16494_2.png) [@Mops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mops)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2021, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-regarding-genderless-nouns-he-they-she-they/955825/14 "2021-12-15T18:39:11Z")
Come to think of it, it seems that usage in German is often different from English where a person is introduced using a noun, later with a pronoun. The pronoun’s gender follows the noun. A German police press release might for instance say: _Zeugen beobachteten eine männliche Person am Tatort, aber sie lief davon bevor die Polizei ankam_ - „Witnesses observed a male person at the scene of crime, but she ran away before police arrived.“