I just watched Is Doctor Who Transgender Now? A video essay, and the history of singular they in the English language is inevitably brought up. Now this is a long-time puzzlement of mine: when you use they to talk about a singular person, do you say they are or they is? Not asking which is “correct”, but which is more used by native speakers
edit: also, do you use themselves or themself. I see the former more often
They are.
I don’t think “they is” is correct English at all.
But we do have a teacher in our midst… paging @deltaandthebannermen
Yeah, absolutely “they are”.
My favourite thing if someone says to me “you can’t use they/them to refer to a single person” is to say:
“If someone knocks on the door and you don’t know who it is, you might say: find out who it is and ask them what they want”
I got around the singular they pretty fast. You know, in Mandarin we only differentiate he/she/it when written. All three words are pronounced as ta. Its just confusing to refer to a singular person but the verbs are in plural form at first
Singular “they” is used the same as plural grammatically. The only thing I’ve seen active change of is “themselves” sometimes turning into “themself” in singular. There are people who hate it, but I’ve gotten used to it.
Pretty much everyone uses they are, since that sounds more natural to most English speakers and is how singular they has always been used, but themselves vs. themself is pretty much your choice, I think. Most grammarians would probably say themselves is the correct option but I’ve noticed a shift towards themself when talking about an individual who uses they/them pronouns. (I personally tend to use themself.)
As the parent to non-binary children, I’m well aware of the minefield that is the shift in the use of pronouns. It will take society a while to come to a consensus but it is definitely ‘they are’ grammatically. They has always been plural or singular but has always been followed by ‘are’.
“They are” is what I’ve been using (and taught at school) and what I’ve been seeing/hearing other people using, both from native English speakers and others.
Fun fact: in Finnish, we use one pronoun for he/she/they (singular) = “hän”, so you have to figure out from the context whether one means “he”, “she” or “they” when speaking. Swedish uses “han” for “he” and “hon” for “she”, and originally had no separate word for the singular “they”. However, the word “hen” was introduced a decade ago or so and is now commonly used to refer to the singular “they”.
It seems either a bit chaotic in Finnish or a lot simpler 
Inspired by Sweden, parts of Denmark has also tried to implement “hen” - it hasn’t gained a foothold and has been the butt of many a comedians jokes in the last decade.
I looked into it yesterday and apparently non-binary people in Denmark do in fact use “de/dem” as singular pronouns - I would much prefer for “hen” to be used as the way I was taught Danish grammar “de/dem” is distinctly plural in nature and thus sound really weird to me. Oh well, language change continuously through use.
Unfortunately, this is true hear as well. It feels divided between people who use it naturally and people who don’t use it/make fun of it. Often make the verry “funny” line “hen” are you a höna (as in the English transaction of hen).
It’s actually surprisingly easy (at least when having a vasual conversation), but then again, I’m a native, so who am I to tell 
and to make things weirder, it’s common for peoppe to replace “hän” with “se” in casual, spoken Finnish. “Se” is the equivalent of “it” in English, so we walk around referring to everyone as things rather than people 
The best thing about using just one pronoun for all people is that we prevent the issue of what to call non-binary people and there is never an issue of misusing pronouns or misgender someone, since everyone falls under the same pronoun.
I love this, the whole concept of having to try and work out the gender of someone when addressing them feels antiquated to me.
I’m a cis male but I’m in a gay relationship and have had (typically old) waiters accidentally misgender me if they saw me with my husband and didn’t look closely enough the opposite has happened to a cis lesbian I know. It’s ridiculous!
(I’m not saying they were necessarily bad for doing that or that I’m perfect - I’ve accidentally misgendered people online due to typing fast and not really thinking. I just mean there should be a gender neutral phrase for everything that we can all agree on!)
This happens to me all the time 
personally, I find it amusing, and honestly I don’t think anyone can ever always be perfect about it