The lack of an obvious third-person singular, gender-neutral pronoun in English is a familiar feminist topic. So it’s fascinating to read that a new one may be evolving. Apparently, some younger speakers are using the word ‘yo’ in this way, as in “Yo looks like a freak” (via The F-Word). But there’s also a very old alternative, singular ‘they’, of which I’m a great fan. This one goes way back, as this web page documents (and as Anne Bodine documented in a nice paper from the 1970s). It continues to thrive in spoken, and even written English despite all the best efforts of prescriptive grammarians. Now I’ve learned (thanks, Sally!) that this may be due to divine sanction. And a lovely mug commemorating his fact has been proposed (though, as you can see, ruled out at the same time).
