I listened to a linguistics prof (a New Yorker?) on YouTube on this subject. Much to my surprise, he was pretty strident and forthright. He said (and I paraphrase) 'I will use your preferred pronouns when speaking to you, out of respect, but you don't get to tell me what to use outside of that context'
That was rather what I meant. Preferred pronouns are third-person. Why would I use
any third-person pronoun, preferred or not, when addressing you? And, if I use the second person, as any language that I have so far come across would demand, then it's gender-neutral anyway.
All this fuss about third-person pronouns, and not a whisper about the ambiguity of the second-person pronoun (as to whether it's singular or plural).
I think youse are missing the point ...
Well, yes, every time I encounter another language, I am struck by how we have impoverished ours by dropping our thees and thous, but that's a slightly-different issue.
