New
#1
A fricking foreigner needs help with English
Background:
I come from a bilingual family in bilingual country. I have two native languages, mother tongues, Finnish and Swedish.
In Swedish there are different personal pronouns for male and female, han being English he and hon being she. However, in Finnish there's only one personal pronoun hän, which can be either male or female.
An example: when a chapter in a book in English starts "She entered the room...", we already know that the person is female. In Finnish translation reader would at this point not know if the person in question is female or male, the sentence in Finnish being "Hän astui huoneeseen...", pronoun hän only telling it's a person but not if that person is male or female.
I was in a meeting for an expat association here in my adopted home town Leipzig, and noticed something interesting. Whereas an Englishman, a Londoner always used words "he or she" when talking about a person with unknown sex, another our member from Glasgow, Scotland changed the singular personal pronoun in his speech to they. As when talking about a singular person of unknown sex, he would say "In case of Brexit, they would need to decide if applying for German citizenship would be a good idea or not for them".
In this case, he used words they and them as singular personal pronouns, to talk about one specific person of unknown sex.
Which one is correct English? Is the Scotsman's use of pronoun they when talking about a single person of unknown sex only something used in Scotland, or is it correct, official English? Should I use "he / she" or "they" when I talk about one single person of unknown sex? I really cannot find the answer on Internet, hoping you native English speakers to educate me.
Kari
Quote