Gender neutral pronouns like they/them have existed for centuries, though. They have a use in this context.
If might repeat myself?
Invented words- even invented pronouns- do take root when they answer a commonly-felt need . "She" certainly took root, didn't it? And we're going to have to be inventive here if we want to have both singular and plural gender-neatral pronouns, and to be able to tell them apart. And inasmuch as we want clear communication, I'm pretty sure that we do want both, even if some of us haven't yet noticed that. The drift towards adopting they/their/them as singulars got stuck partway because, so long as we also (and even pimarily) regard them as plurals , they are highly ambigous in any number of contexts. So, we evidently need to either invent some singulars (or commission some redundant or vulgar singulars) or else nab the plurals, and invent some new plurals.
How to get people to agree on any one particular solution is a bloody great big problem. Yeah. Maybe lobbying for one particular solution and calling people bigots when they fail to fall in line is the only fast way forward. I don't like it , though. And I like it even less that the proposed solution only adresses half the problem and leaves us no better off, linguistically.
TL;DR? or have we just reached that point when a forum discussion naturally goes round in circles as new voices join in? (not altogether disconnected from TL;DR though, i guess)
I mean, it's implicit in my post (and several otherS) that they have a use. Indeed they have been used as singulars, at need, for centuries. So we can take that much as read. What we need is a bunch of non-binary third-person singular pronouns that work in all contexts without ambiguity. That's not just "grammar snobbery". Ambiguity can kill. And in this particular instance, could potentially lead to mass shootings where only one person was supposed to be to be shot, couldn't it?
Never mind if they/them/their are
accepted as singulars by grammaticists. . It doesn't follow that we can
apply them as singulars willy-nilly and still be understood. Some discretion is required. If the idea is to use them indisctminately, then we''ll just have to stop stop using they/them/their as plurals. But then we'd have to invent new plurals. Seems simpler to invent new singulars...and/or or go back to that 11th C "e" (or "a" ) for he /she.
That has the advantage that it's already been contracted to the limit and can't be contracted any further, so could potentially remain stable for millenia
without causing any confusion.
The only reason
e didn't endure was because the powers-that-were (back inthe 12th C.) felt a need for gender-specific pronouns . Hence
he and
she were born, and
e fell out of use.
That demonstrates that you certainly can change these things by means of conscious decision. But you can;t control the way common usage will wear words down (especially pronouns), so it makes sense to anticipate that. Given that "them" has already been shortened to 'em , which sounds an awful lot like 'ím, i'd say we're backing a sure-fire loser taking them as an official replacement for him. Thus far, we've been able to avoid ambiguity (when it matters) by pronouncing those words more carefully. But if "them"becomes identical in meaning to "him" in all contexts, then that no longer works.
