Everyone has Their Opinion

The Chicago Tribune (registration required - use "random" and "password) features a stupid solution to a nitpicky problem:

Everyone knows he or she should mind his or her grammar.



Everyone also knows saying "he or she" and "his or her" makes a simple sentence somewhat tedious and self-consciously politically correct, but it is considered archaic and sexist to use only masculine pronouns.



Saying "everyone knows that they should mind" is widely considered a grammatical error because "everyone" is singular and "they" is plural -- they don't match. Saying "one should mind one's grammar " is considered stuffy and impersonal. Saying "all people know that they" is overstating the case -- "everyone knows" usually means conventional wisdom, not universal knowledge.



Enter Dr. Richard Neal, author of the book "The Definitive Solution to the Problem of Sexist Language: How and Why It Is Solved" (Sense & Reason, 50 pages, $11.50). In 2003, Neal applied for a patent for his plan to replace the words "him," "his" and "her" with the word "hir" (which he pronounces as "here"), as well as "hesh" (pronounced "heesh") for "he" and "she" and "wan" for "man" and "woman." Neal's application, which is still pending, was posted last month at the Web site of the U.S. patent office (www.uspto.gov).

Hesh? Wan? Hir? You must be joking. You want this level of change from a nation that's been in the process of converting to the metric system for the past forty years? And metrics aren't even silly. Hir, on the other hand. . .



Why not just trash the d*mn rule that "their" can't be singular? Everybody uses it like that anyway, at least when they're not being graded for grammar. Even linguists agree:

The simplest solution to the problem of finding an epicene singular pronoun, linguists say, is already in the language -- use "they." A singular "they" is nothing new. Writing at the Random House Web site, Jesse Sheidlower, North American editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, pointed out that many reputable writers used the singular "they." Shakespeare wrote in "Much Ado About Nothing," "God send every one their heart's desire!" The King James Bible translated Matthew 18:35 as, "If ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses . . . "



Linguist Henry Churchyard lists these and other samples on his Web site (www.crossmyt.com/hc), including 75 citations from the works of Jane Austen. "Singular `their' (etc.) is not an innovation, but old established good usage," Churchyard writes. "So here anti-sexism and traditional English usage go hand-in-hand."



Sheidlower adds that the singular "they" should be no more objectionable than the singular "you."



English used to reserve "you" and "your" for plurals, and used "thou," "thy" and "thee" for the singular. But "thou" and the others dropped out, and "you" started pulling double duty. Eventually, "they" could, too, and "he or she" will be as old-fashioned as "thou."