4.11.01
there are some deficiencies in the english language that have really been bugging me lately. in particular, it’s the shortage of pronouns that bothers me: we lack a non-gender specific third-person singular pronoun. and it’s not like we don’t need it. take a look at yesterday’s entry. i wrote the whole thing using the ambiguous “they” to refer to the person who broke into my car, then decided that it sounded ridiculous and changed it all to “he”. but how do i know it was a guy who broke into my car? of course, one can always revert to “s/he” or “he or she”, but try keeping that up for more than a sentence or two and it gets pretty weighty. the romance languages handle this ambiguity by making the masculine version of the third-person pronoun the default term when gender is uncertain. this isn’t ideal, though, since it exposes the inherent patriarchy embedded into the very structure of the language. so i think we need a whole new pronoun just for cases like this.

we’re also lacking a second-person plural pronoun. the phrase “you guys” is gaining acceptance as an actual pronoun. never mind how tacky it sounds (and don’t get me wrong, for lack of a better word, i use it constantly myself), what happens when you want to make it possessive? “you guyses”? using “you” and “your” for both singular and pluar needs just isn’t cutting it any more. there are lots of times when you need to differentiate.

if english is a growing language, why doesn’t it grow something useful, like some pronouns, instead of just appending more phrases like ‘wazzzup!”? if a star fish needs a new arm, it grows another arm, rather than getting some flashy neon lights or something installed. really, i think this tells us that in matters of practicality, prehistoric sea creatures are showing us up. at least they have exoskeletons. wouldn’t that be cool?