If I hear "they" are foreign" I'm capable of any or all of the following as situationally relevant:
* deciding if singular or plural is relevant based on the antecedent.
* deciding if singular or plural is relevant based on other context.
* deciding if the singular or plural actually meaninfully changes the meaning of the statement within it's context and not worrying about if it doesn't.
* in the vanishingly rare cases where it's meaningful, contextually unclear, and I am still unsure, I can ask.
I may be an imbecile, but fortunately it takes only a minuscule amount of mental power to handle all this. English has a lot of redundancies and deducing from context is built into the language.
So when hear a simple snippet "they are foreign" I assume either it will become clear from further context, or it doesn't matter how many people "they" refers to since someone is having a tantrum about pronoun usage.
Perhaps what's really bothering you isn't that I pointed out the historicity of a common, centuries-old pattern in the English language, but rather that someone missed naptime and is grumpy.
Not really, "they" has been used to refer to a singular gender neutral subject for way longer than you've been alive. Whether it refers to plural or singular subject, and often who it refers to, is all pulled from the context of the story.
No, no it hasn't. The first time I heard it was about 20 years ago. Its annoying and intentionally confusing. People used the singular pronouns before that and just gendered them when that provided clarity. The gender neutral singular pronoun in English is 'it'. I get that you think the world was created when you were born but that's just not the case and all you are doing is making older people not trust your judgement.
PS Communication normally is about clarity. This type of intentionally confusing change in grammar is straight out of Bolshevik propaganda. Just like the phrase "politically correct" which literally means its wrong but I will have the state use violence against you if you point out that its wrong.
Here's my source[0], certainly I doubt all of society in the 1300s designed a word to intentionally confuse you 700 years later. But feel free to provide your sources.
Just because you heard it 20 years ago, does not mean that it was not used before.
In addition, "it" is not used for people. Yes, it is a gender neutral pronoun, but would be considered very offensive if you refer to a person by "it". The only example where you can use it usually is a baby whose name and/or sex is not known, often prior to them being born.
The phrase "politically correct" mostly only used by "anti-woke" snowflakes who believe they are better than those who tell others to leave non-binary folks alone, yet at the same time will rage all day just because some said that they're a "they" or some silly little thing. As if they've got nothing else to do in life but get angry at someone for having a preferring on how they want to be referred to.
Also implying that the natural evolution of the English language is some form of propaganda is wild to me. The language is essentially an evolution of German, with heavy influence from Roman/French and Old Norse. Saying that it is propaganda is like saying there's been some psyops by millions of people happening over centuries to mislead millions of other people.
The only correct thing you've said is "communication normally is about clarity". Honestly, to me, it feels like that hasn't really worked on you. You're certainly not clear about the history of the English language.
> if you hear "they are foreign" you don't think its multiple people?
This is almost never ambiguous within context. I blame the outrage on illiteracy. If you don't read a lot, even a simple turn of phrase or grammatical ambiguity could be anxiety inducing.
