The speakers used yo only for same-age peers, not adults or authorities. A study by Stotko and Troyer in 2007 examined this pronoun. These students had spontaneously created the pronoun as early as 2004, and commonly used it. In addition to an interjection and greeting, yo is a gender-neutral pronoun in a dialect of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) spoken by middle school students in Baltimore, Maryland, the student body of which is 97% African-American. Marshall recorded the existence of a dialectal English epicene pronoun, singular ou: ''Ou will' expresses either he will, she will, or it will.' Marshall traces ou as possibly deriving from Middle English a. Ou was first recorded in a native English dialect in the 16th century.

Both the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and Wright's English Dialect Dictionary confirm the use of 'a' in place of 'he,' 'she,' 'it,' 'they,' and even 'I.' It is a reduced form of the Old English pronoun, 'he,' meaning 'he' and 'heo' meaning 'she.' Some surviving British dialects still use this pronoun. Marshall documented the use of a, used by 14th century English writer, John of Trevisa. These pronouns do not strictly fit the definition of neopronouns, as they developed naturally in the language and, as far as we know, were not created by an individual with the goal of creating a gender-neutral pronoun. All of these pronouns have only been recorded in their nominative form. As far as linguists know, there are no other forms of these words (possessive, reflexive, etc), although more forms could easily be created if desired.

Some regional dialects of English historically had or still have gender-neutral pronouns that were or are not used outside of their respective dialects.

What are neo pronouns