They/Them

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Someone correct me, but "you" was originally plural. The correct way to address a singular person is "thou".

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You sound fun to hang out with. I'm in.

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I'm glad you can belch now.

Pelicanen

I think it's originally from Red vs Blue

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When I started interacting with a non-binary person more often, the only reflexive pronoun that came to mind was ‘themselves.’ As in, “They bought themselves a pair of socks for their birthday.” It felt a bit awkward since I couldn’t shake the plural association in my head, but I still used it to be respectful.

Then I remembered that the word ‘themself’ exists and I felt stupid.

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Thou are correct.

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No no, hear me out.

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I don't do this, and growing up was taught that it was rude to refer to someone by anything other than their name in a group conversation.

CarrotsHaveEars

Dear native English speakers, would you mind inventing a new word either for gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun, or one for what "they" mean to foreign English speakers since you are so insisted in differing its meaning from the text books you shipped us decades ago?

English is so inconsistent at this point. Only the third-person pronouns have gender in singular form, the plural form has no gender and now you are telling us the gender-less form can be singular now? How confusing!

English is widespread partly because it has simple alphabet and relatively easy grammar. I don't mind someone being in LGBT+ group at all, but could you please don't mess with the language?

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In "who left their bag here"'s case, the gender of the person is not known because their identity isn't known, so it doesn't feel strange to use (for us old farts). It can take some effort to retrain your brain to use "they" when it's a single person whose identity is known (speaking from experience as a Gen Xer).

Or the person might just be a transphobic asshole. But I like to think that most just need to educate themselves on using pronouns correctly.

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So you're going to refer to John by John's name exclusively? Sounds a bit awkward, but okay.

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In my language everything little word is gendered so everything you talk about is bound by it. It's extremely confusing thinking or understanding how to describe something in terms "non-gendered".

I really am supportive of all the changes needed in the world, but the use of "they" is very confusing in a singular form for people who don't have it as first language and concepts and everything was learned by mapping stuff to other language, so please invent some word for it and go with it. It's already strange and always difficult understanding the usage of "you" in singular vs plural and formal or not speech.

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I had heard that "you" was originally "thou", and the plural was "thee". But people used a character called "thorn" to write the "th" in "thou", and it ended up looking like this: þou. But eventually the þ got substituted with "y", due to some printing press shenanigans. So, "you" was singular and "ye" was plural.

The wikipedia on "you" didn't completely answer the question, either.

doctorskull

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As the comic shows, "they" ("their," in this case) was already used as a singular when the gender was unknown. The only change is it's now also used if the person's gender is known and isn't "he" or "she."

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Thou was singular subject and thee was singular object.

Thou, Thee, Thy, Thine & Ye: Meanings & Usage

In works of old, high-fantasy or historic fiction one may have chanced across the strange words: thou, thee, thy, thine and ye. Whilst mos...

(activeenglishcee.blogspot.com)

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That's something I wonder about as a non native speaker: it's singular they but verbs are still plural (they are, not *they is, they comes). Maybe this will change some day, maybe not. Singular s might die out anyway or maybe because of singular they.

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What is "JK" referencing to?

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Yesn't. Actually no.

The singular was thou for subject and thee for object and the plural was ye/you. In formal speech the plural was used and the subject pronoun was replaced by the object but I can't tell you in which order.

The þ-thing didn't effect the pronoun but some surnames and the article. I think some pubs have names like "ye old". They used to be "þe(=the) old" and have nothing to do with þe old pronoun, even tho it is written the same.

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That comment did not imply any of this in the least