Why, yes, I'm pro nouns!

Pronouns. Gotta love 'em. Without them, our language would become torturous. Imagine having to use the correct nouns each and every time you spoke of something, rather than having the ability to substitute a pronoun? The first three sentences of this blog post, in fact, would probably end up having to read like this:

Pronouns. All people have to love pronouns. Without pronouns, the language of the American people would become torturous. As well, a language lacking pronouns would require a speaker to speak in the third person.

I'm not sure what lead me there, but I read some articles, recently, about teachers in Baltimore who have been documenting what they refer to as a new gender-neutral pronoun. Barbara Wallraff, senior editor and words columnist at the Atlantic Monthly blogged about it in The Detroit Free Press, saying:

The latest news from the language front is that teenagers in Baltimore have invented a gender-neutral singular pronoun: "yo." When I learned of this, I was fascinated -- for about 10 minutes. Then I started to get upset.

Gender neutrality seems to be a bit of a holy grail. I remember my first introduction to the concept -- and how many people take it very seriously -- a number of years ago when a transgendered person interacted with us on the misc.writing newsgroup. This person introduced many of us to the terms "zie" and "zir" to use in place of, say, "he" and "his."

There is a website, of course, dedicated to Gender Neutral Pronouns, and they discuss all of the alternatives, but ... I gotta tell ya ... I'm perfectly happy with the gender neutral pronoun set we already have. I see no need to invent, and foist upon us all, new terminology.

You're probably thinking "WTF?"

To my way of thinking, the pronouns "he" and "his" and "him" are all perfectly suitable. Don't bother pointing out that these are masculine pronouns. They used to be masculine pronouns, sure, but they're now gender neutral ones. They acquired gender neutrality in exactly the same way that all words acquire new uses, and new definitions: through repeated and consistent use. As well, the plural pronouns are also gender neutral, and came to be that way through the same device.

For those who are uber sensitive about the former masculinity of "he" and the former plurality of "they", well, fine. You may continue your search for something someone will swallow but I'll go on merrily referring to a person of unknown sex as "he" or "they."

It's how we all talk, man, and I am more concerned with being understood than in being genderally correct.