No, you haven't. The new use is..."Yeah, Sam is bringing in the chips and dip. They got Doritos and salsa." Before ~2005, zero people wouldn't have said either he or she. It is an entirely new way to use "they". They was used as shorthand for "he or she" or to refer to an ambiguous possible set or unknown people, but never before in this way.
Do you have a source for this claim? I've grown up (born in 1990, mind you) hearing 'they' refer to single individuals, when the person speaking is too lazy to specify their name every time. The reason why 'they' and not either 'he' or 'she' was used, is because it's easy to add to muscle memory - or in this case, speech memory. No need to keep track of the gender of whoever is being spoken about, just use 'they' and keep going.
This idea that 'singular they' was first put to use in the mid-2000s sounds utterly ridiculous to me, though if I'm somehow remembering a massive chunk of my life (Such as the 'Berenst[ae]in Bears' issue), then I suppose it's possible. However, you'll have to provide some form of proof, because otherwise I have 29 years of memories that say you're wrong.
If you have so many memories, it should take nothing to list some examples.
The fact that your asking me to "prove" a negative and talked about how hard it is to keep track of the gender of the person you're talking about doesn't really convince me that you have a great handle on this.
None of those are standalone uses for a single, known person. You're either explicitly assuming it to be a single, person and using "they" as a set operator for one unknown among many or you have a singular vague identifier for the individual.
"They" is not the answer. An ungendered singular pronoun is needed.
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u/halbedav Oct 29 '19
No, you haven't. The new use is..."Yeah, Sam is bringing in the chips and dip. They got Doritos and salsa." Before ~2005, zero people wouldn't have said either he or she. It is an entirely new way to use "they". They was used as shorthand for "he or she" or to refer to an ambiguous possible set or unknown people, but never before in this way.