Editing They (section)

==History==
{{Further|Proto-Germanic pronouns|Proto-Indo-European pronouns}}[[Old English]] had a single third-person pronoun {{lang|ang|[[He (pronoun)|hē]]}}, which had both singular and plural forms, and ''they'' wasn't among them. In or about the start of the 13th century, ''they'' was imported from a [[Scandinavia|Scandinavian]] source ([[Old Norse]] {{lang|non|þeir}}, [[History of Danish|Old Danish]], [[Old Swedish]] {{lang|non|þer}}, {{lang|non|þair}}), in which it was a [[Grammatical gender|masculine]] [[plural]] [[demonstrative]] pronoun. It comes from [[Proto-Germanic language|Proto-Germanic]] *''thai'', nominative plural pronoun, from [[Proto-Indo-European language|PIE]] *''to''-, demonstrative pronoun.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Origin and meaning of they |url= https://www.etymonline.com/word/they |website=Online Etymology Dictionary |first=Douglas |last=Harper |date=2017 |access-date=20 March 2021}}</ref> According to ''[[The Cambridge History of the English Language]]'':<ref>{{Cite book |title=[[The Cambridge History of the English Language]] |volume=II: 1066–1476 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |date=1992 |editor-last=Blake |editor-first=Norman |editor-link=Norman Blake (academic) |page=176 |ref=Blake (1992)}}</ref>

{{blockquote|1=By [[Geoffrey Chaucer|Chaucer]]'s time the ''th''- form has been adopted in London for the subject case only, whereas the oblique cases remain in their native form ({{lang|enm|hem}}, {{lang|enm|here}} &lt; [[Old English|OE]] {{lang|ang|heom}}, {{lang|ang|heora}}). At the same period (and indeed before), [[Scots language|Scots]] texts, such as Barbour's Bruce, have the ''th''- form in all cases.}}

The development in [[Middle English]] is shown in the following table. At the final stage, it had reached its modern form.

{| class="wikitable"
|+Three stages of ''they'' in Middle English<ref>[[#Blake (1992)|Blake (1992)]], p. 121</ref>
!
!I
!II
!III
|-
!Nominative
|{{lang|enm|þei}}
|{{lang|enm|þei}}
|{{lang|enm|þei}}
|-
!Oblique
|{{lang|enm|hem}}
|{{lang|enm|hem}}
|{{lang|enm|hem}} ~ {{lang|enm|þem}}
|-
!Genitive
|{{lang|enm|her[e]}}
|{{lang|enm|her[e]}} ~ {{lang|enm|þeir}}
|{{lang|enm|þeir}}
|}