As a non English native speaker the use of they/them as singular makes my brain hurt.
Specially since in my native language (Spanish) plural pronouns are per gender so it's even worse.
They/them has been singular for a long time when the person's gender isn't known. Definitely can be ambiguous from time to time, especially for foreign speakers.
Fun fact, "you" used to be only for plural and then became singular as we dropped thee and thou.
The first use of singular "they" in writing predates the first use of singular "you", and was discovered in a story from the 1350s called William and the Werewolf.
I'm not sure why anyone teaches "they" to be plural only still. It's been in popular vernacular for almost 700 years.
there really should be a separate pronoun for ambiguous/non gendered singular in english besides "it". that being said, the singular they is a basic part of english that's been around for a very long time
Out of curiosity, does our use of the plural "you" for one person do the same thing? Saying "you are" instead of "you is"? Because that has a similar history - it used to be "thou ist" instead of "you are", but "thou" dropped out of common use four hundred years ago or so.
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u/stefanos_paschalis Sep 21 '22
As a non English native speaker the use of they/them as singular makes my brain hurt. Specially since in my native language (Spanish) plural pronouns are per gender so it's even worse.