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[–]Three_oneFourWanted for thought crimes in countless ideologies 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I do wish English had a proper singular gender neutral pronoun simply so that we can end ambiguity or confusion. If someone finds a skeleton and has yet to be able to identify the most likely sex, this person would be unable to say with confidence he or she, but unless wanting to refer to the skeleton as an it, would be forced to treat the deceased person as either an object, a guessed sex, or plural. There is no regular ke or pe or anythign like that to simply refer to a single human of unknown or undeclared sex. Unfortunately, we can't make useful gender neutral pronouns without people jumping on board to act like their gender is defined by that pronoun and making everything complicated again.

[–]slushpilot 16 insightful - 2 fun16 insightful - 1 fun17 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

single human of unknown or undeclared sex

That is precisely what "they" as an indefinite singular pronoun is meant for. The problem only arises when trying to use it for a definitely known person, and pretending like you don't know who they are. (This usage of they is exactly as intended.)

Imagine showing up at a hotel desk and saying: "I'm here with my wife and my son. They would like a separate room."

[–]Three_oneFourWanted for thought crimes in countless ideologies 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Your example makes absolutely perfect sense because the group referenced by "they" actually is a plural. Wife and son are two different people, so to refer to both of them makes perfect sense to use they. But when a single person uses it as their only pronoun, problems happen

[–]just_lesbian_things 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I thought the example was referring to the son as a they, since we're talking about referring to definitively known people as ambiguous they.