He, She, It…They
Over at The Corner, Kevin D. Williamson discusses a nonsensical promotion to change the third-person singular indeterminate pronoun from he to they. In other words, rather than say the traditional “If the auditor needs more information, he should request it using this form,” or the more recent but awkward “he or she should request it” to the seemingly gender neutral “they should request it.”
Williamson is understandably opposed to this proposal, but does so by entering an ancient battleground.
Williamson”s opposition is on strict rules of grammar: the third person singular indeterminate gender pronoun in English is properly he, which implies he or she. Unless, of course, the individual is certainly male, in which case he is masculine. This is a weird concept, but is quite common in most languages; Turkish, the Czar believes, is the most common language that has a gender neutral singular pronoun (o), applicable to either gender and implying neither.
Alas, Williamson proceeds to lecture us about Latin, and that Latin has lots of masculine words that apply to either gender, and a lot of feminine words that applied to male-dominated positions. Well, no kidding: so do most Romance languages, as well as Slavic and Germanic languges.
It goes both ways, by the by: we refer to boats as she, even though the Old English words for large watercraft were all masculine words—bát, flota, naca, brenting, brimþyssa, brimwudu, and on and on. And scip, from which we get ship, was neuter.
Trust the Czar, who first learned English when Chaucer was speaking it: anytime some makes a grammatical argument about English using Latin, he is leading you in the wrong direction. Forced, and false, Latinization of English is why we incorrectly believe it is wrong to unnecessarily split infinitives, why prepositions are bad things to end sentences with, and why the passive must be avoided.
What this is, as Professor Mondo will recognize, is an ages-old debate between English majors as to whether grammatical rules should be prescriptive (“do it like this”) or descriptive (“here is how people actually speak”). The former takes the hard line, and usually asserts some Latin I rule to back up any claims. The latter is all about capturing the many diverse ways people speak, and hey—if the message is understood by the recipient and you’re consistent with it, you go with it.
The Czar agrees with Williamson’s objection for this reason: the insistence to switch to third person plural is neither prescriptive nor descriptive; enforced political correctness violates both philosophies.
On matters grammatical, the Czar finds himself more or less in the former (prescriptive) camp, but understands that many people really do say “they” instead of “he or she.”
The Czar’s actual position is more subtle: if you have a sentence that requires you to decide between he, he or she, or they to make your point, your sentence is flawed and needs editing. Start over with a complete restructuring: the auditor shall use this form when requesting more information. Done.
Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.