On a mildly similar note, the "pronoun confusion" that was mentioned before is the reason why I personally would enjoy having pronouns in English that functioned like pointers in software code. Essentially, one would be able to explicitly define the corresponding subject for each pronoun used, and a higher number of subjects (say four to six, for example) could be discussed simultaneously with pronouns without confusion as to which pronoun corresponded to which subject. Of course, this would be even less likely to happen; most people don't think in the same way that programmers do, and thus would be likely to find such mechanics more confusing.
I've thought of that myself and I wouldn't mind seeing such a system. We can almost approximate this, but I've only ever seen it used in making examples with non-specific individuals. That is, using Person A, Person B, and so forth which can later be called simply 'A' and 'B'. For something like that to work with specific individuals, you'd need some kind of defining mechanism. The easiest would be sentence which specifically declare these connections. But I have a hard time seeing something like that getting adopted into common use, and it would also make such defining sentences very important not to miss. Especially if the subject changes and you redefine something and that gets missed.
I could imagine a system where there are a set of pronouns which you could tack any letter on to it, and that letter would be the identifying property. For example,
"Jim and Bob will be coming later. Jey said bey'll bring beir guitar, and jey'll bring jeir drums." Of course, I don't expect something like that to actually catch on. I'm mentioning it mostly because I find the idea interesting.
How exactly should people be identified? As androgynous?
I skipped over this before, but I think it deserve mentioning. Kobuk, what would be so bad about that?
As I've asked several times which no one seems willing to answer: Why is it so important to specify with pronouns whether the subject is male or female? It seems to me that the reason for it is entirely so that society can treat men and women differently. It's a hold over from when society viewed men as more important than women. It's like how some languages have pronouns that specifically identify if someone is higher class or lower class. But if you actually want to treat people as equals, there is no reason for these kind of divisions to be built in to the pronouns. Instead 'male' and 'female' should be treated as simply aspects of the individual that can be specified on an as needed basis, the same as any other aspect of the individual. Why would this be such a bad thing? Is there some other purpose for it that I'm overlooking?
I can understand the argument about it not being worth the effort to change it. And although I'd like to see language shift away from gendered pronouns, I don't expect the use of gendered pronouns to go away any time soon. Even so, it would be still nice to have better gender neutral alternatives.
... Strictly speaking from that point of view, it wouldn't seem that we're there yet.
You may be right about that. After all, there are still a lot of people that think men and women
should be treated differently, and there are still a lot of people that are anti-LGBT. However, I'm not proposing we ditch the current system. At least not all at once. Like I said, I expect any such change to be a slow process.