The singular only version of "they" is "they", just like the singular only version of "you" is "you". "You" was formerly plural, with "thou" as singular, but "thou" has since fallen into disuse.
> "You" was formerly plural, with "thou" as singular, but "thou" has since fallen into disuse.
Sadly. Overloading "you" and "they" feels rather clunky. I wish it got rid of "he" and "she" instead - gendering pronouns is completely useless, and that's coming from someone whose native tongue genders much more than just pronouns...
You was always both singular and plural, but in the singular form it was the formal second person pronoun, whereas thou was the second person singular informal pronoun; it's the same as the difference between du/Sie in German, tu/vous in French, or je/u in Dutch. This is why the King James bible uses thou: it's intended to feel more accessible to its readers with a friendly tone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You says the singular "you" didn't occur until Modern English, and the singular form 'ye' died out in the 1600s with early Modern English.
The King James Bible, published 1611, uses "ye" as the singular form of the formal "you", as in "Ye shall know them by their fruits."
] In a period of rapid linguistic change the translators avoided contemporary idioms, tending instead towards forms that were already slightly archaic, like verily and it came to pass.[87] The pronouns thou/thee and ye/you are consistently used as singular and plural respectively, even though by this time you was often found as the singular in general English usage, especially when addressing a social superior (as is evidenced, for example, in Shakespeare). ...
] Another sign of linguistic conservatism is the invariable use of -eth for the third person singular present form of the verb, as at Matthew 2:13: "the Angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dreame".
I've been trying to figure this out and just end up being more confused.
One issue is that song's use of "ye" seems to be from the 1750s, so about 150 years after the KJV usage, which in turn was somewhat archaic. English changes.
> In Early Modern English, ye functioned as both an informal plural and formal singular second-person nominative pronoun. "Ye" is still commonly used as an informal plural in Hiberno‐English and Newfoundland English
So it's possible that the KJV uses "ye" only for formal singular second-person, even if was also used more widely used for informal plural, and as that informal plural became more widely used, it became the go-to way to translate the Latin, which is in plural.
