They/Them

merde alors

"he/him" probably isn't he/him in their non-gendered language. In some languages there's no he or she, there's only a pronoun that means "that person"

Armenian, Persian, Tagalog, Finnish, Georgian, Turkish &c

Skua

Other commenters have already covered the you/thou thing, so to cover the printing press bit: that did happen, but with a different word. "Ye" as in "Ye Olde Village Inn" is the one. The "ye" here is "the", and it was pronounced as "the" too. It would have been spelled "þe" before, and in blackletter style (𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔰 𝔰𝔱𝔶𝔩𝔢 𝔬𝔣 𝔩𝔢𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔤), "y" and "þ" looked awfully similar. If your press came from a country that didn't use the thorn - and many presses in Europe did - and therefore didn't have that character available, then you'd just use the y since they were close enough anyway

A similar thing happened with the letter yogh (ȝ) in Scotland. It wasn't in most presses, but it looks close enough to a z, so just use a z, and now the name "Menzies" is spelled that way despite being pronounced "ming-iss"

That this "ye" is spelled the same way as the second person plural subject pronoun "ye" is a total coincidence

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Yeah it can take a while to get used to, especially if you knew the person before they changed their pronouns. But the point is it isnt incompatible with our language at all. I think the last panel would be better if it showed the (transphobic) guy and another person and he says "this activist said the craziest thing to me today" and then the second person says "oh yeah, what'd THEY say" because then the 'they' pronoun would be directly referring to the person who wanted to be called 'they' in the first place.

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Mate, english is my second language too and this is not that confusing.

Singular they/them has been here for hundreds of years and using it as a gender neutral alternative to she/her and he/him isnt shit, its part of the english language.

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The "terminally online" aspect is the obsession with pronouns, which doesn't seem to exist in reality.

I know quite a few LGBT people and even work with someone who is trans. None of them have ever once mentioned anything about pronouns. Because we just conversed like normal people.

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Also singular they is older than singular you. So any idiots who complain that "they" should only be plural should only be using thou/thee for second person singular.

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"I was with Dan (they/them) and Steve (he/him) the other day. They forgot a poster they needed and went back to the car to get it."

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it is fairly common to use the third person pronoun of someone during a group conversation, even while they are there

But is improper to do so. The proper way to refer to a person who is present is by using their name.

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maybe i have never been in proper situations, then, because in my experience, people will use pronouns or names indistinctly

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Yeah. Lol. I figured that out, too, eventually.

Skua

One thing that might help it feel less strange is realising that you already use a grammatically plural pronoun to refer to individuals all the time: the word "you". It's always "you are tall", not "you is tall", same as "we" or "they" instead of "he" or "she". This is because it was historically plural, and "thou" was the singular. Over time we started using the plural to be more polite, and then eventually always using it.

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I mean, I'm mid 30s, and it took me a long time to internalize "he, she, they" rather than "he, she, it". It's just how they were used when I was growing up. Fortunately, I've had the opportunity to learn and grow. At the end of the day, just speak with respect and make sure you listen as much as, or more than, speak.

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You're going out of your way to create a problem that doesn't exist. Just Dan? Say Dan went back to the car. Both Dan and Steve? Say they both went back to the car.

If you just don't respect people's identity then admit you're bigoted instead of hiding behind faulty logic.

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It only feels strange because of how it's been used previously in my lifetime, not from historical usage. But as you've shown, language changes over time, and not having a singular neutral pronoun has proven to be a big omission in English (since "they" has only traditionally been used that way in certain limited cases). If it was good enough for "you," it's good enough for "they!"

Skua

It's equally unclear if both Dan and Steve use "he", it's just the the options are "Dan / Steve" instead of "Dan / Dan and Steve"

Skua

You don't use the person's name every time when you're talking about them in their presence. If I'm with my friends Mark and Fergus, and I'm telling Mark a story about something that happened to me and Fergus earlier that day, I'm going to use "he" or "his" to refer to Fergus a lot.

"Can't believe how close we came to an accident on the way here. We were walking past a building with some scaffolding on it, and a brick just about hit me on the head. Fergus was looking up at the site anyway because his company is advertising on the site, so he saw it fall and stopped me just on time."

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Others have addressed some of your other points, but

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

We actually have that. Xe / Xem / Xyrs. It isn't very widely used though, and is generally considered a neo pronoun.

Honestly I don't really expect it to get mainstream use anytime soon, in part because people are already accused to the singular They / Them / Theirs (except for when a nonbinary person asks to be refered to as such).

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I have never heard y'all used singular, growing up in the American South. Instead, as I understand it:

Y'all: You all, referring to a group of people (Can potentially be a subset of a larger group, e.g. talking to one couple at the table among a group of friends). "When are y'all having the wedding again?"
All y'all: shorthand for "all of y'all" Explicitly referring to "all of the members of the group in question", requiring that at least one member of said group is being addressed by the speaker. The difference is there are no exceptions (apart from exaggeration) "Ain't a single one of you innocent, all y'all had a hand in this" or "All y'all need to put on your seatbelts, I ain't going to jail for any of y'all's comfort".

JackbyDev

I agree. It's hard to put myself back in the old mindset (and I was definitely not supportive of this type of thing back in pre-2014) but I really do think I used to use "his or her" more often than "their", or at least in more formal settings.

I remember on Mark Rosewater's Tumblr blog he ran a Q&A (he is the lead designer of Magic: The Gathering). Someone was asking about cards using "his or her" instead of "their" because not everyone uses he/she pronouns. His response was basically that the reason they did that was because they used the Chicago style guide and it said to use "his or her" when referring to a single person of unknown gender. Basically he said that he understood players have different genders, but it was just a style thing, and that the rules even said something about "his or her" referring to the player (regardless of gender). Since then, I believe Magic cards now use "their", so it's possible Chicago's style guide changed (or at least Wizards' policy did).

JackbyDev

"Thou is tall" sounds weird though.

you already use a grammatically plural pronoun to refer to individuals all the time: the word "you". It's always "you are tall",

This made my brain short circuit lol. Can't believe I never noticed.