Re: Epicene pronoun in english?

Joe wrote:
> >"A friend of mine is visiting tomorrow" "Are (is?) they coming for a
> >specific reason?"
> >
> >
>
> Really?  That seems a very odd situation.  No wonder you Americans have
> all this fun trying to invent epicene pronouns.  You would never use
> 'is'.
I would never use "is" either, I just wasn't sure if "is" was used or
not in dialects that used singular they more frequently ("themself" also
sounds exceedingly awkward to me, but I understand that it's quite
common in some other dialects, so I didn't know if that
"singularization" also extended to verb forms).  At any rate, my point
was, I would never use "they" in that situation, only a gendered pronoun
or avoiding pronouns all together.

> I wonder if, eventually, they will come to represent the whole third
> person, the way 'you' did the whole second person.
Probably.  And then a new pronoun will have to be invented for third
person plural.  :-)  Perhaps "them-all" or "those guys" (analagous to
"you guys") or "th'all" (by analogy with y'all).

In one of my future English attempts, I had just that.  Singular epicene
(I can't remember if I retained he/she/it) "they" plural "all'm" (<
all'em < all-them < all of them)

--
"There's no such thing as 'cool'.  Everyone's just a big dork or nerd,
you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." -
overheard
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42