NE-NER-NIS (part 2) - LANGUAGE 02

As mentioned in a previous post, I've created a trio of neuter singular pronouns, as follows:

NE: subject pronoun. Replaces he, she, he or she, they, or one.
NER: object pronoun. Replaces him, her, him or her, them, or one.
NIS: possessive pronoun. Replaces his, her, hers, his or her, his or hers, their or theirs, or one's.

These pronouns can be used for persons (or animals or robots) of unknown, unspecified, or irrelevant gender.

WHY NER, and not NIM, for the OBJECT PRONOUN

Some people tell me they'd prefer NIM for the OBJECT pronoun. I explain that I thought about that, too, before I rejected it in favor of NER for OBJECT and NIS for POSSESSIVE.

Principle #1. Gender Equality. NE uses the E that is common to both HE and SHE. For the non-subject pronouns, I wanted to be fair and borrow the masculine ending for one and the feminine ending for the other.

Principle #2:  Auditory Comfort. In order to be accepted, the substitute pronouns should be such that our mental and physical ears do not balk: the N is enough of a surprise.
The problem with using the ending sound of the feminine possessive is that it has two forms: HER and HERS:

It's HER book. The book is HERS.

HIS has only one form. The second person and the third person plural have two forms, too: THEIR and THEIRS, YOUR and YOURS, OUR and OURS. Our ears want to add that S - or rather the sound of  Z - whenever the possessive has no noun after it. And then, of course, there's MY and MINE. HIS is unique in 2 ways, or maybe I mean singular in 3 ways. Anyway, because HIS is the same with or without a following noun, NIS seemed the better choice for the possessive. That made NER the right choice for the object pronoun.

In addition, ER ends both the objective and the possessive adjectival forms of the feminine singular pronoun. That could lead to endless confusion or a violation of Principle #1 or both.
 

I feel certain that if people just start using these neuter pronouns, 

they can accustom their ears to the sounds.

NB: The Natural Superiority of NE NER NIS with apologies to Ashley Montagu*: The italicized sentence has two plural  nouns:  people and pronouns (the plural noun PRONOUNS, I mean). If I leave the humans singular, then I can use "THEM" as the pronoun for the pronouns. As it is, my use of "they" is ambiguous. To avoid further ambiguity, I chose to use "sounds" rather than "them" at the end of the sentence. With NE NER NIS at my disposal, I can write:

 I feel certain that anyone who starts using these neuter pronouns 
can quickly accustom nis ears to them.

As to ear-training: At some level, good grammar and good word usage come down to things that do not offend the ears of the people who think they know better. And yes, I consider myself one of those people because I pay attention, I care, and I try to hold myself to a high standard of carefulness and thought. If you are reading this, you do, too.  If you don't like NE NER NIS, then "people who think they know better," who I hope also qualify as reasonable people, can differ.

* Montagu (1905-1999), a  male anthropologist, wrote  The Natural Superiority of Women, one of my mother's favorite books.  It was first published in 1953.  A fifth edition came out in 1999. 

rev to fix HRts: 11-14-2012,
to fix italics and make minor changes: 11-20-12