Other languages are not so lax: the Romance languages (and many
others) distinguish between singular and plural personal pronouns, as well
as between formal and informal uses.
Many languages also have a complex system of honorifics which
requires that speakers situate themselves in social space in relationship to
the person addressed. That is, the speaker will choose among as many as a
dozen or more words or suffixes or tones to add to the utterance, and with
that choice he or she will indicate the degree of respect (based on age,
profession, kinship or other factors), friendship, or lack of respect felt
toward the other person. In Thailand, young teenage girls – socially very
low in the scheme of things – routinely end their sentences with the tag I,
little rat (Simpson 1997).
Another example of a lack or hole in the structure of English is the fact
that there is no impersonal third person singular pronoun. To the dismay of
prescriptivists, we have only he or she, and thus must somehow cope in
situations where we do not want to indicate gender. From the Chicago
Manual of Style (2003): “Though some writers are comfortable with the
occasional use of they as a singular pronoun, some are not, and it is better
to do the necessary work to recast a sentence or, other options having been
exhausted, use he or she.”
In fact, the use of they (their, them) as singular pronouns is very old.
Consider the following examples, dating back to early translations of the
Bible:
A person can’t help their birth.
(Jane Austen, Emma)Whoever it is, I won’t see them tonight.
(M.E. Braddon, Aurora Floyd)God send every one their heart’s desire!
(William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing)Who is in love with her? Who makes you their confidant?
(King James Bible, Matthew 18:35)There are ways to avoid using they or their, but the usage of singular they
is very firmly established. Using both female and male pronouns is