everyone

[Lenka]

Everyone has to decide for themselves where they want to live.

I wonder why "them" and "themselves" is used when talking about "everyone".... You say "everyone HAS, EATS, SEES etc. (the 3rd form)", so why isn't himselfs/herselvs, he/she used instead?

[boothling]

That's a really good question.

I suspect that to be grammatically correct, the phrase ought to be:

Everyone has to decide for himself where he wants to live.

But we try not to use gender-specific pronouns (himself/him) because they exclude females from the "everyone". So to keep everybody happy, you would say:

Everyone has to decide for himself or herself where he or she wants to live.

- but this is very long and clumsy.

So we say:

Everyone has to decide for themselves where they want to live.

because it includes males and females, even though it's grammatically incorrect.

I may be wrong about this, so you ought to wait for other answers as well.

[mykwyner]

Boothling is correct. This is an opportunity to see acceptable language usage change right before our eyes!

O brave new world that has such politically correct people in't!