Quote from: dragonvslinux on Today at 08:28:42 PM

Step 1: Pick up a modern dictionary.
Step 2: Find a gender neutral pronoun
Step: Use a gender neutral pronoun

English does not have a third-person singular neuter pronoun that can be used to refer to human beings. The closest is “it”; but that has always been considered dehumanizing. Whenever you ever see me refer to an anthropoid as “it”, my intent is assuredly pejorative. E.g., during the 2018 alia scandal, as the evidence developed, I sometimes referred to alia as “it” (or more appropriately, “he/she/it/they”); insult was thus intended.

Your mistake may or may not be understandable, coming as you are from French. I must leave it to a French pedant to determine whether or not any French pronouns could be applied in this case, without such an horrific botch as English singular “they”. I doubt it, since even inanimate objects are gendered (and take gendered pronouns) in French.

Links to what you yourself describe as “a modern dictionary” (i.e., a dictionary fashionably conformed to current fads) will be taken under advisement, as will links to Wikipedia in this context. (N.b. that without further context, alia were properly called “they”.)

Quote from: dragonvslinux on Today at 08:28:42 PM

Why is this so difficult, this concept is 645 years old now?
DYOR.

Your rudely condescending appeal to the authority of the OED.com blog in the current year 2020 is unimpressive. Your link is a liberal polemic; it even uses the philologically repulsive abortion “mansplain” (!). Disclaimers to the contrary notwithstanding, it says more about the decay of scholarship at Oxford University Press and the University of Illinois than about proper usage of the English language.

https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/

Quote

mansplains

[...]

The opinions and other information contained in the OED blog posts and comments do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of Oxford University Press.

Dennis Baron
Professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Read Dennis’s blog, The Web of Language, and follow him on Twitter as @DrGrammar.

Tweet, tweet.

Quote from: nullius on February 28, 2020, 04:29:45 PM

* nullius has heard many fine academic jokes that end with the words, “standards are falling”. Hah, hah—only serious!

Having spoken as nobody will, I am none too inclined to take up an offtopic flamewar more suitable for an English usage forum (or Politics & Society). I don’t have time for this now, anyway.

A bit of pedantic trivia: The English word “blond/blonde” is gendered, in both its substantive and adjectival forms; and as an adjective, it must agree with the noun to which it is applied: A “blond” is a blond man; a “blonde” is a blonde woman. Popular misuse of this adjective is one of my pet peeves. The distinction should be unsurprising to anybody coming from French: The English word derives from Middle French, and its proper usage in modern English continues to correspond to that in modern French.

In correct usage, a similar distinction should be observed between “brunet“ versus ”brunette”. Unfortunately, “brunet” has mostly fallen out of usage; I suppose that discussion of men’s hair colours may be insufficiently popular. In colloquial use, the result is a botch. In formal writing, I would dismiss as illiterate any author who applied “brunette” to a male.

I will not expect for Lauda to reveal publicly whether she is actually a blond, a blonde, a brunet, a brunette, or... a redhead. Anonymity, etc. ;-)