Some Gaps in the English Language.

There are several gaps in Prescriptive English and they bug me.

1) The lack of a plural "you".  In the hillbilly states of the U.S. they have "y'all".  Unfortunately that dialect has a lot of negative connotations, so people avoid the term.  Interestingly, I've noticed that younger educated people from that region tend to speak with a more standard version of American English, probably to avoid  those connotations.

Fuck it.  I come from a non-"y'all"ing part of the country and have made the deliberate choice to use it.

2) No marked distinction between an exclusive and inclusive "or".  Most programming languages have it.  This is especially difficult when spoken.  You never how your interlocutor interprets the colloquial "or" so you are forced to use ugly constructions to specify like "a or b but not both" and "a or b or both".  In writing it's easy you just put down "and/or".

I would love to see "xor", pronounced "ex-or" enter the language, spoken and written.  The advantages in spoken English are clear.  It also makes things easier in writing, no more clusmsily trying to reach that pesky "/" key, that only expert typist can seem to hit consistently.

3) a gender/number neutral pronoun, if only to avoid some feminist rants.  I have no problem defaulting to a gendered pronoun when the sex of the person can be reasonably inferred with reasonable accuracy.  Hypothetical construction workers are "he"s and hypothetical nurses are "she"s.  It's the hypothetical server that is the problem.

And then there is the problem that you don't always know how many people you are talking about.

Sadly, every solution to this situation is ugly and I can offer none better.