On the Ted radio hour, linguist Ann.
Curzan says she gets a lot of complaints about people using the pronoun they to refer to one person.
I sometimes get into arguments with people where they will say to me, but it can't be singular.
And I will say, but it is the history behind words causing a lot of debate.
That's on the Ted radio hour from NPR.
This is fresh air.
I'm Dave Davies.
The streaming service Max is currently showing season two of the series Tokyo Vice, the story of a young American who moves to Japan and learns the language so well that he lands a job as a crime reporter writing in Japanese for the countrys largest daily newspaper.
He investigates the activities of the Yakuza organized crime syndicates in the country and gets personally involved with many colorful figures, at times putting himself in danger.
Heres a scene from the first episode of season two.
The reporter Jake Adelstein, played by Ansel Elgort, is working on a big story involving a mobster and a high ranking government official.
He arrives at his newsroom, where his editor, played by Rinko Kikuchi, explains that a critical piece of evidence in the story, a videotape, has been destroyed in a mysterious fire at the paper.
Jake, what the hell happened?
They think someone left a cigarette burning in an ashtray.
It all went up in flames.
But they made copies of the videotape, right?
They were all in that safe.
Everything inside melted from the heat.
We can still run the article, right?
Without that tape, anything written about him is liable.