I learned English in my teens and I use "he" as the default pronoun because that's what everyone uses.

Indeed. It would be great if everyone who claims that gender neutral pronouns should be used could give a few examples, at least for us non native speakers. I get strange looks whenever I refer to people (hypothetical, or not) as "it", which would be the obvious gender neutral pronoun.

Currently it's 'they'. Yes, there's some confusion about whether it refers to one person or more, but that confusion already exists with 'you', in all except regional usages.

The difference is that "you" can be grammatically singular or plural, whereas "they" is definitely grammatically plural.

"they gives me the shivers"

In, "they give me the shivers", they is singular.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

You did see that I made a distinction between grammatically and semantically, right?

Grammatically, the "they" is clearly plural, as it is used with the plural verb form "give" and not the singular "gives".

Look up "subject verb agreement".

"they" and "you" act exactly the same way. Which is no surprise, because both are originally plural. What difference are you referring to?

Maybe focus on the actual meat of the argument rather than the plate it's served on and you'll enjoy your meal more.

Ok sure. In that case, I'll point out that being "a common practice going back hundreds of years" should lead you to question something, not accept it.

It reminds me of the time I recommended (to the Unix team at a major financial institution) that they use ssh rather than telnet, and being rebuffed with "that's the way we've always done it".

In this case, since you want to be specific, the practice of defaulting to "he" correlates with hundreds of years of treating women as chattels, with economic consequences and imbalances that persist today, and continue to be reinforced through structural, unconscious, and explicit biases, and that we'd all be better off without.

The notion that language should reflect thought is as old as Plato.

> the practice of defaulting to "he" correlates with hundreds of years of treating women as chattels

Er, no. It just means it is the unmarked/unremarkable case corresponding to males being generally worth less and discardable ("save the women"...).

It is also a quirk of some of our languages that the gender-neutral pronouns are considered derogatory when applied to people. German and English have this problem ("it", "es"), whereas French "on" seems to be okay.

So the language requires gendering when no gender is semantically intended. In German, every noun is gendered. So "person" is "she", whereas "human" is "he", "Civilisation" and "Society" are both "she", "state" is "he". "Lampshade" is "he" whereas "Lamp" is she, etc. You can try to read deep meaning into these quirks, or you can just not.

TL;DR: Not only are you reading way to much into linguistic quirks, your analysis is also at best shaky.

But the way that sentence would normally be said where I'm from (Australia) would be "as long as they give a good talk" - no need to use specifics when you're talking about a specific person. I find it disjoining when I hear otherwise.

I also find it weird that German and Spanish inject gender into every noun, although I do get that there's little meaning behind it (from the little quizzing I've given speakers of each)

> But the way that sentence would normally be said where I'm from (Australia) would be "as long as they give a good talk"

Yes, language evolves. Currently, this is almost certainly grammatically incorrect, "they" being the third person plural and (not shown here, but assumed) the speaker being singular.

"They" is being pressed into service as the non-derogatory, gender-neutral third person singular that's missing in english. So "they" has started to mean both third person plural and unspecified third person singular. The previous solution was that "he" meant both "male" and "unspecified". So previously women got their own pronoun, men didn't, now we have a harder time telling whether there's a single person or a group.

Both solutions have their quirks, both work at some level.

I pondered this exact thing, but came to the thought that you actually are talking about multiple people.

"As long as they give a good talk" - you're not talking about one specific person but in fact a general population of speakers.

Original was: "problems a speaker at a conference might have, as long as he gives a good talk/presentation."

The pronoun refers to "speaker", singular, yet indefinite, we don't necessarily know who it is.

Let's substitute "they: "problems a speaker at a conference might have, as long as they give a good talk/presentation."

Yep, works for me, but I think the "they" definitely talks about about that single (if indefinite) speaker. Yet we use the plural of the verb ("give"), so the sentence is confused, grammatically. I wonder what will give as this evolves, whether "they gives" becomes acceptable or we simple leave "they" grammatically plural even when it is semantically singular.

Language. Fun times!

> Currently, this is almost certainly grammatically incorrect, "they" being the third person plural and (not shown here, but assumed) the speaker being singular.

"They" has been grammatically correct for single person of unspecified gender for hundreds of years. Do a little research before saying ignorant things.

Only "on" in French is specifically for persons whereas "it" is for things and not persons. It is properly considered derogatory to refer to a person as a thing - hardly a quirk. "On" is also non-specific and can't stand in for he or her. The advantage or quirk in French is the singular possessive pronouns follow the gender of the thing possessed not the possessor. Edit: to clarify, my objection is that "on" is not an example of a gender-neutral all-purpose or sentience-neutral pronoun. Not having one of these is hardly a quirk (just a pita).

>Only "on" in French is specifically for persons whereas "it" is for things and not persons.

I think that's what I wrote.

As in english you use 'an apple' and 'a girl'. It's just linguistic quirks. Not a demeaning term

I know languages where literally every word is gendered, and languages where almost nothing is gendered and haven ever seen any correlation to how women are treated.