I do wish English had some common-use ones that were explicitly singular, though.

In the long run I predict that "they" will follow the same path as "you" - it'll become increasingly more associated with the singular, until it's the default interpretation. I also predict that both "they" and "you" will eventually require a pluraliser to convey the plural.

"Vos" (you, singular) in Rioplatense Spanish followed a similar path.

If that's correct, eventually there'll be explicitly singular second and third person pronouns.

Dude is supposed to be gender neutral and singular.

Totally agree. I think half the problem is that English is a stupid language at times. I have no problem with gender neutral terms but the plural nature of “they” makes my 54 yo brain hurt. I have the same issue with the word data. “The data are” sounds awkward to me.

I also appreciate the thoughtfulness he showed when he found out someone he had recently collaborated with had made transphobic comments in the past.

You're never going to appease everyone, and I appreciate that he shared the thinking that led him to his decision. I just regret not finding out about the incident until like a week after I ordered her book.

"He or she" is so clunky and I immediately think they must be 50+ when I see someone writing it.

Fun side fact "the player" is a masculine noun in German, so many boardgames seem sexist because they are mistranslated as "the player.... he..."

mad respect for counting those spaces

He/she

s/he

It's pretty obvious when someone misgenders by mistake or reasonable ignorance. If someone gets upset about that it's probably because they feel insecure about it at that point in their journey. Just correct yourself if you catch it and move on, be open to civil feedback if you don't.

In any case if you feel unsafe around someone because of their behavior then consider spending less time around them. You don't have to feel like you're stepping on eggshells if you're making an honest effort to learn and improve.

i like this comment but i feel the need to reply because it touches upon a pet peeve of mine in linguistics: there is a persistent myth in the modern period that grammatical gender is useless, pointless, or somehow arbitrary and is just some sort of vestigial, rotting, lexical limb that made it to the 21st century by fluke.

this is simply not true. just because grammatical gender often appears arbitrary or illogical doesn’t mean it actually is. and just because grammatical gender follows many, many rules does not mean there are no rules. grammatical gender is just a fairly common form of noun class system. as with most forms of noun classing, what the rules are in a given dialect can be a little wishy-washy but they are certainly not arbitrary.

for example, you point out the german Mädchen as an example of illogical noun gendering. this is an opinion often expressed by foreigners learning the language, and even by linguistically-ignorant germans. it makes sense on the face of it, this word has a similar meaning to the english phrase “little girl,” so it is strange the germans decided to sort this word into the neuter gender, no?

well, no. it isn’t strange and it isn’t illogical, in actuality. -chen is a diminutive in german. for those who are unaware, diminutives are suffixes/prefixes in languages that serve to make nouns feel smaller or more cute in a language. think booklet vs book or dog vs doggie for some english examples.

what are some examples of more german diminutives?

das Kätzchen - kitten

das Hündchen - puppy

das Plätzchen - a cookie (depends on dialect exactly what this refers to afaik but generally is always some sort of cookie)

das Ohrläppchen - earlobe

noticing a trend? these are all neuter! and thus we uncover a little grammatical rule that grammatical gender was trying to tell us. all diminutives are neuter.

most every “arbitrary” example of grammatical gender people provide has some sort of similar reasoning or rule behind it, some story or information it is trying to give you that makes speaking the language that much easier.

just because what it is encoding doesn’t seem useful or logical to (rhetorical) you doesn’t mean it is not. grammatical gender is much more than just gender-washing everyday speech for kicks and does carry useful meaning, if you can be bothered to puzzle it out. attempts i’ve seen to “de-gender” spanish (this is just what is local to me) all fundamentally misunderstand what it is they’re even trying to do and often opt for rotely tearing out the entire gendered case system without offering proper lexical and linguistic infrastructure for the language to actually effectively function without it. these attempts sound clunky because they are clunky! and to be perfectly clear i’m not dogging on the premise, just the serious attempts i’ve seen implemented in real life speech and their implementation. i think it’s relevant bc it showcases how modern misunderstanding of what grammatical gender is can realize as actual, negative manifestations in the non-conceptual world. why this is important to think about more than passingly!

edit:formatting

Vous is the 2nd person plural pronoun. Only for when you're speaking directly to someone, which isn't gendered anyway (2nd person singular pronoun is Tu).

French doesn't have a gender neutral 3rd person pronoun. It's il or elle. Which is unfortunate. There have been attempts to create a gender neutral 3rd person pronoun but none have really taken off. Most French non-binary people who prefer gender neutral pronouns in English will use the pronoun in French that most closely align with their presentation. Il for mascs, elle for femmes. I'm hopeful for this to change honestly.