They/Them

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.

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Well... that is entirely a you problem. You should do a little soul searching to figure out why it is so difficult for you to pay someone dear to someone you call a friend the bare minimum amount of respect.

Would you be upset if your friends constantly misgendered you, then acted like you were the asshole because you took issue with it?

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You don't use the person's name every time when you're talking about them in their presence.

Those who appreciate polite behaviour do.

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I don't understand what you're trying to express.

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You're going out of your way to create a problem that doesn't exist.

The problem does exist, that's why you're making suggestions about how to work around the problem.

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

You're jump to conclusions.

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maybe i have never been in proper situations

Indeed. More information on proper communication for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalization

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You're jump to conclusions

Lol. Alright buddy, I'm done here.

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You're not going to bother to point out the fault in my logic?

Skua

If the Dan in your example used he/him pronouns and so did Steve, then it is equally unclear

"I was with Dan (he/him) and Steve (he/him) the other day. He hadn't brought a poster they needed and went back to the car to get it."

There's no way to know whether the "he" is Dan or Steve. The they/them pronoun isn't the problem in your example, the structure of the sentence is.

Skua

"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 Fergus's company is advertising on the site, so Fergus saw it fall and stopped me just on time."

Nobody talks like this

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I’m joining in the “this blew my mind” sentiment and just want to say thanks for sharing this tidbit of info.

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We use ты for second person singular.

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No, it's just been a thing forever, and will always be thing. Those teachers, if they ever existed which I doubt, were just dumb fucks from Dumbfuckistan.

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Stop. You are making some of the senseless things in English make sense. How I’m I supposed to feel superior because my first language is read the way it is written?

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If you're with Dan (they/them) and Dan (he/him), you would also have the problem when saying

"I was with Dan and Dan the other day. Dan hadn't brought the poster, so Dan went back to the car to get it."

So to avoud confusion, people should not be allowed to be called Dan anymore. In fact everyone gets a UUID so there is no more confusion.