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Notes -
While I don't know the history of "ask" vs "aks", I do also tend to find a lot of stuff like this in descriptive linguistic spaces, which is something that annoys me that I did not include in my original post.
Often when I see someone committing a prescriptive faux pas by questioning certain misuses of language, I see many people rush in to tell that person they're wrong.
Don't you know that use of the singular "they" in English is correct and ancient? Shakespeare used to use the singular "they". The same goes for use of "literally" as an emphasis. And we've always been at war with Eastasia.
I'm not personally equipped to argue back at these people, because I don't know enough of linguistic history, but something just feels like it could be wrong, like they may be misrepresenting history. But I have no way of knowing.
Maybe it was used, but was it "proper"? Must we defend any language simply because it was used at some point in history?
The singular they where gender is genuinely unknown is legitimately old, in the sense of predating middle English(IIRC it comes from old Norse which used neuter for referents with unknown gender), and opposing it is actually a neologism attempting to bring English in line with continental languages which use a generic he.
Using it to refer to persons whose gender can be reasonably implied(the father took their son to the matinee) is as stupid as any other gender ideology neologism.
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The singular “they” is often used in a particularly annoying motte-and-bailey fallacy.
Motte: The singular “they” has been used for thousands of years! Shakespeare used it! [Used it—but in the context of an unknown person or unspecified person, as in “Someone left their bag here”]
Bailey: Let’s use the singular “they” to refer to specific, named people! (E.g. “When I asked Jamie what they were doing this evening, they said that they were going to the protest”)
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