In English I’ve understood it is common to use a singular they as a non gendered pronoun. In Swedish the newly introduced hen is in quite widespread use instead of han/hon (he/she).
If that is your concern, just use the noun. “The politician made a statement to the press. The politician was shocked.” Or if that is too inelegant, reformulate the sentence: “The politician expressed his shock to the press.” Or use the verb to carry the information that you are referring to the singular: “They was shocked.”, but I guess that would be painful to read for some native English speakers.
Yeah, but there’s no good solution there. If you use a pronoun that can apply to multiple subjects or objects in a sentence, it will always be ambiguous.
> If you use a pronoun that can apply to multiple subjects or objects in a sentence, it will always be ambiguous.
My point exactly. There's nothing inherently unique about singular "they" in that respect.
Sure, there are certain circumstances in which a gendered pronoun removes ambiguity, just as honorifics or age/social status based pronouns would remove ambiguity in many instances involving multiple male subjects/objects if English used them (like some other languages do), but that really isn't a reason not to use singular "they" with the same degree of care to avoid ambiguity one also has to use "he" and "she".
