Where Language Is Slow To Evolve

John McWhorter doubts that English will ever embrace a gender-neutral pronoun:

In language there are open-class and closed-class words.

Open-class ones, such as nouns and verbs, can be made up, or used in brand new ways, as new things and actions arise in the course of human affairs. Closed-class words are much harder to create out of thin air. They aren’t things or actions, but tools to show the relationships between them. For example, prepositions situate things in space and time. Note that you can’t make one up, such as one that describes something being airborne instead of on the ground. The plane is gunch the air—cute, but hopeless.

Pronouns are the same way. They stand for something, namely nouns. They’re tools. We use them more than we use nouns themselves—rapidly, unconsciously, all day. Thus, we are no more likely to change them than we are to alter the way we swallow. We are, as one might say, “severely” conservative about pronouns.