On Friday, 12 June 2015 at 18:32:22 UTC, Tofu Ninja wrote:
On Friday, 12 June 2015 at 15:19:40 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad
wrote:
"My friend came in to the shop today and the entire time they
just kept asking for corks..."
For me that sounds 100% fine...
Ah, ok. I found this link interesting:
http://blog.dictionary.com/oldenglishgender/
Apparently Old English may have lost its gendered nouns when it
was melted with Old Norse due to conflicting genders on same noun.
And it is rather obvious that english "they" have common root
with norwegian "de" from Old Norse "þeir":
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/þeir
So I'd find it an odd coincidence if norwegian singular "De" was
not related to english singular "they"… but it could also come
from "Sie" through the trade German influence in Bergen around
1300…
Wikipedia has no real answer I think except that the first
written occurrence of singular they was early 1300.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
