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[Reelya]

Random Question: Why are napkins called napkins?
Google’s answer, nappe=Old French for tablecloth + map (English) + kin (English)

Etymology? Nappe is Old French for tablecloth as stated. The link to English was originally the French-speaking aristocracy of England post the 1066 conquest. See the pattern of Cow / Beef, Sheep / Mutton, Pig / Pork. The word for production is Saxon, the word for consumption is French/Norman, which outlines how the class structure worked post conquest. This is a common pattern in conquered or colonized cultures, with words related to consumption and rulership/governance in English being of French origin compared to words related to commoners/production being Saxon.

"kin" also denotes a diminutive quality, so nap-"kin" might have denoted that they're smaller cloths used at the table, rather than the full tablecloth, the "nappe". A bit about the addition of "kin" to words, which is from German:

https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2016/07/kin.html

[Naturegirl1999]

Thanks, when I saw the work kin it made me think kin=family, which was confusing

[methylatedspirit]

Is it strange that I want to be referred to with they/them pronouns despite the fact that nominally I identify as male?

Whenever I'm referred to with he/him, I have to dig up the gender file (a very slow process) and read off of it to confirm that I'm apparently a man. It's not a problem of me being fundamentally uncomfortable with he/him pronouns, it's that I don't enjoy having to load that thing into memory from wherever it's stored. My own gender's so unimportant to me that it's been shoved to the lowest rung of the memory hierarchy, and as such has the highest access time.

[wierd]

But the grammarians positively *HATE* it when you use They/them in that manner!!

https://www.npr.org/2019/08/06/744121321/even-a-grammar-geezer-like-me-can-get-used-to-gender-neutral-pronouns


It makes their (heheh) tight little assholes pucker up like a baby eating a lemon just THINKING about how it is not only genderless, AND indefinite in its plurality, but also just does not care that it makes them sad pandas.  That people have persistently used it for 150+ years just makes them even saltier.

[Naturegirl1999]

I only learned that a single person can be referred to as they/them via Undertale, after which I looked it up and realized that yes them can be used singularly

[methylatedspirit]

But the grammarians positively *HATE* it when you use They/them in that manner!!

Those grammarians can go and -- pardon my French -- fuck themselves. If they're not going to update their language to follow new standards, then they should clearly be using a Pentium 4, an Nvidia FX 6800 Ultra and Windows XP as a daily driver. The old standards are just as good, right?

[MaxTheFox]

I use it when I don't know someone's gender because "he/she" is clunky (also intersex people). I don't care what "grammar experts" say. English is a living language, we aren't speaking Latin or something. There must be no regulation-- let the speakers of said languae regulate it themselves.

[scriver]

My butt don't pucker up at the use of gender neutral pronoms in Swedish but it grates me very much when people use the made up jippo word "hen/henom" instead of the several ways one could use already existing gender neuteal pronoms "en/den/dem".

[Naturegirl1999]

For some reason your post made me think of when people say “it grinds my gears when [thing happens]”
People don’t have gears, at least they normally shouldn’t. I know what the expression means, it seems to be another way of saying the person’s mad...however if a robot running on gears had their gears grinder, wouldn’t that drive them to a halt in whatever part said ground gear(s) are found?

[MrRoboto75]

You should've seen the funny noises my old car made.

[methylatedspirit]

I don't want to be pushy or anything, but I still wanna know if it's weird that I want to be addressed as they/them despite nominally identifying as male (my reasons are on the previous page). It's something I'm still racking my brains over.

[Naturegirl1999]

I don't want to be pushy or anything, but I still wanna know if it's weird that I want to be addressed as they/them despite nominally identifying as male (my reasons are on the previous page). It's something I'm still racking my brains over.

I don’t think it’s weird. If you prefer being called they/them, we’ll call you they/them

[Egan_BW]

I don't want to be pushy or anything, but I still wanna know if it's weird that I want to be addressed as they/them despite nominally identifying as male (my reasons are on the previous page). It's something I'm still racking my brains over.

no

[Arx]

I don't want to be pushy or anything, but I still wanna know if it's weird that I want to be addressed as they/them despite nominally identifying as male (my reasons are on the previous page). It's something I'm still racking my brains over.

It's probably weird in the sense of being unusual, but not in the sense of being bad. I've long held a related stance that I don't actually really cars what pronouns people refer to me with, because it doesn't matter much to me. I can understand extending that to preferring not to have to think about it at all.

[Reelya]

But the grammarians positively *HATE* it when you use They/them in that manner!!

Those grammarians can go and -- pardon my French -- fuck themselves. If they're not going to update their language to follow new standards, then they should clearly be using a Pentium 4, an Nvidia FX 6800 Ultra and Windows XP as a daily driver. The old standards are just as good, right?

Singular they goes back hundreds of years, much longer than the prescriptivist grammarians have been around.

You know what is actually broken? Singular you. "Thou" originally meant one person vs "You" for groups of people. Hence why "y'all" was invented - it fills the semantic gap left by merging the singular and plural forms of You.

So "You" is broken. The argument against singular they is that it's 'they are". But ... we also have you are, which is in fact a quirk left over from the plural you, so there's really no consistent basis for the anti-They thing.