On person first language for disabled people

Some people like what they call “person first” language for disability. That is, rather than say “I am a learning disabled person” I should say “I am a person with a learning disability”. This is supposed to indicate that the disability doesn’t define me.

I say this is nonsense. Person first language is silly at best and demeaning at worst.

In English, we nearly always put the adjective before the noun it modifies. “A black cat”, “a hot day” and so on. We also do this for adjectives that describe people “He is a tall person” (or “he is tall”) not “he is a person with tallness”. And we even do it for traits that are stigmatized: No one says “a person with Blackness” or “a person with homosexuality”. And we do it with some conditions that are quite similar to disabilities. Do you ever say “a person with myopia”? No. You say “a nearsighted person”.

The only relevant exceptions are when the adjective is a phrase of more than two words, because then “adjective first” gets confusing. “Neal Armstrong was the first person to walk on the moon” not “Neal Armstrong was the first moonwalking person”.

It should be the same with disability. So “I am learning disabled” or “I am a learning disabled person” but, if we get more specific “I have nonverbal LD”.

If we treat terms related to disability the same way we treat other adjectives, then we say that disabilities are like other adjectives. They describe us. But they don’t define us. If we make English change for words related to disability we are demeaning ourselves by saying that a disability is not like other traits.

But don’t refer to the person as a disability: “He is a learning disability” is awful.

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