On Filling a Linguistic Hole

As I've written before, there's an annoying and uncomfortable "hole" in the English language - namely, its lack of a neuter, singular, third-person personal pronoun. We can use "he" and "she" for people and "it" for objects, but there's no universally accepted way to refer to a person whose gender is unknown.

Historically, many writers have used the singular "they" to fill that hole, and that's commonly used in everyday speech as well. I tend to think that that's the best solution we have in many respects, but I don't like it at all because "they" is and ought to be a plural pronoun. That's it. Every other commonly used pronoun (except "you," which is also problematic) has separate singular and plural forms. It makes both writing and speech much more clear.

Having said that, the singular "they" is very popular in many contexts, far more so than other proposed singular pronouns such as "ze" and "xe." It's preferred in informal writing, and it's preferred in British English. Only formal writing in American English still resists the singular "they," preferring instead the problematic generic "he" or the inclusive but clunky "he or she."

Thus, I'd like to make this modest proposal.

When it's necessary to use a singular, third-person, gender-neutral personal pronoun, write the following:

• "Thay" for the subjective case.
• "Tham" for the objective case.
• "Thamself" for the reflexive/intensive case.
• "Thair" for the possessive form.

I've used an 'a' in these words to distinguish them from the plural forms (and used one in "thamself" for the sake of consistency), but they're pronounced exactly like "they," "them," "themself" and "their." It does seem a little weird to pronounce the 'a' in "tham" as a short 'e,' but English vowels don't have standard pronunciations anyway, so I feel comfortable taking that little creative liberty.

Some examples:

• If a student does well on thair exams, thay should pat thamself on the back.
• Look at the person on your left and pass your paper to tham.
• What did thay want?

The big advantage of this system, I think, is that it matches up very nicely with spoken English. Other than possibly replacing "themselves" with "thamself" when speaking in singular terms, people could continue to use the singular "they" in speech. It becomes, technically, the singular "thay," but it's pronounced the same way and used the same way.

Meanwhile, in writing, such a system would allow us to distinguish between the plural and singular "they," leading to less ambiguity and clearer communication. That's always the goal, is it not?

I don't know if this will ever become common usage, but it's worth a shot.