3 pronouns and evolution

Posted on November 30th, 2008 at 7:02 am by admin

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I took Middle English at university. Did you know there were extra letters in the alphabet?

Then there was something called The Great Vowel Shift in the 1200s that changed English pronunciation and left the plural of mouse as mice but not house as hice.

Evolution is like that. It sweeps in big changes and leaves many casualties. Left to their own devices, the misfits die out. that is, unless they are being kept alive artificially. Language changes by the day, faster than the dictionaries and grammar books. Unfortunately, in today’s English, pronouns are a major casualty.

He/She/They

English lacks a non-gendered singular pronoun. We’re stuck saying he or she or switching everything to the plural and using they, or sometimes even you. A hundred years ago, folks could get away with using he, but don’t try it today unless you don’t value your teeth.

There are no good solutions this problem. In time, they is going to be considered a singular as well as plural pronoun. So a sentence like When the candidate comes in, they should leave their coat in the closet would be correct. Today, it isn’t.

However, using they and you to get around the he/she problem will create even more problems. We will have to squint to decide if they is referring to a group or just one person, or if you is referring to YOU or to anybody.

Everyone/Everybody

Some pronouns that are singular in grammar are plural in idea. So it’s only natural to say Everyone should bring their reports on Monday instead of Everyone should bring his or her report on Monday. We could simply declare these pronouns to be plural. But then we’d have the challenge of getting used to saying Everyone have left.

Who/Whom

I know people still try to use who/whom correctly. But it’s so difficult to get it right, and a misused whom is so much worse than a misused who that we should really just give up.