Ne-ner-nis - Rejected (Part 4) - LANGUAGE 04 [04a?]

Author's Note: Per Blogspot I last edited this post in February 2018 but left it as a draft. When I went to edit it today though, Blogspot says it was published on 1/31/2016.  However, when I click on the Permalink, the page is not found. I can't find it in my published posts either.  Nevertheless, the stats show 96 views. Well, I'll just publish it now, without further edits. FWIW. - RJM 12/14/23.

In three previous posts I have proposed NE-NER-NIS as neuter pronouns. Yesterday, the New York Times reported that several hundred lexicographers met to decide on the best neuter subject pronoun and they chose THEY. Needless to say, I think they are wrong, and THEY is wrong. Before ne-ner-nis disappears from the lexicon, I would like to eulogize it. Or rather as Marc Antony said, "I come to bury [them], not to praise [them]" but we know he meant the opposite.

Singular or plural?

They - the lexicographers, not the pronoun - decided that it was OK for THEY (the pronoun) to take a plural verb because YOU is also both singular and plural and takes a plural verb either way. Hmmm. There IS a difference. When you use YOU, the person(s) to whom you (the person not the pronoun) speak knows whether he, she or they (the YOU to whom you speak) is one or more than one. When you use THEY, the person(s) to whom you speak is different from the person(s) about whom you speak. He, she or they (the hearers) may not know whether he, she or they (the subject/object of your utterance) are one or more than one.

2. Because "he" was rejected for unknown or unspecified genders, and "she" was too new to some ears, many writers and speakers had schooled themselves to replace singular nouns with plural ones in order to use "they" thereafter. But that often led to ambiguity if there was another plural noun in the sentence. I discussed this in Ne-ner-nis (Part 2) (scroll down to "Natural Superiority"). Using "they" as a singular, makes the ambiguity a permanent feature of the language.

The Extinction Problem

As with natural species, these days we are losing words faster than we are gaining them. That is because when we use a word that has a specific meaning in place of another perfectly fine word with a different meaning, we lose the unique meaning of the first word and have to resort to multiple words to achieve what we had before done with a single one. (See The Reticent/Reluctant Hesitation).

The Veterinarian Problem

We need a neuter pronoun not only for transgender humans but also for animals. We also need one when (1) we speak of a human whose gender is unspecified, unknown or irrelevant and (2) it is logical to speak of that human in the singular. As to animals, the other inventor of ne-ner-nis, whose invention is independent of mine and preceded it by several years, was in fact a veterinarian named Dr. Al Lippart. If it's embarrassing and offensive to call Spot "he" when Spot is a "she" or vice versa, will it be better to call Spot "they"? I invite Dr. Al to weigh in on this question.

January 31, 2016, rev (minor) 7/13/16

Andy Borowitz, Tracy Klugian and Harland Dorinson

For a couple of years now I've subscribed to The Borowitz Report and I am a big fan. I also have a good memory for names, which could be why I noticed that Borowitz recycles them. Very often he attributes quotes from spokesmen, men on the street, or experts to either Harland Dorinson or Tracy Klugian. Also, Davis Logsdon, as I discovered writing this blog. And there may be others. By the way, Tracy is always "he," as far as I can tell, although Tracy can be a woman's name, too. As to the use of "he," Mr. B. should read NE-NER-NIS to learn how easily he could avoid choosing a sex for ambiguously-named persons.
          Nowhere on the web could I find a mention of the ubiquity of Klugian and Dorinson. This leaves me wondering whether they are completely fictitious or just (un)lucky enough to be associated with so many different statements and fields. They also grow old and young and old again at Andy's fancy: he always

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 other grammatical persons have two forms, too, mostly with an S at the end:  OUR and OURS, YOUR and YOURS, THEIR and THEIRS.  Our ears want to add that S - or rather the sound of  Z - whenever the possessive pronoun is not followed by a noun. The only exception to the final S is the first person singular: MY and MINE. That makes HIS unique, or maybe I mean singular in two 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.

 ***

The Natural Superiority of NE NER NIS (with apologies to Ashley Montagu*)

Consider this sentence:

I feel certain that if people just start using these neuter

 pronouns, they can accustom their ears to the sounds.

Because there are two plural  nouns --  people and pronouns -- the word "they" after the comma is ambiguous or at least a potential stopper. To avoid a second ambiguity, I use "sounds" rather than "them" at the end of the sentence.  But 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 are whatever does 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
other revisions:  7-5-13, 1-31-14