Post by Bannanachair on Apr 9, 2019 15:36:27 GMT -4
Pronouns are stupid, especially in English. They have always been a pet peeve of mine, because in some ways they can be weirdly specific but about useless things and in other ways they can lead to too much ambiguity in both spoken and written conversation. I will complain about every single English pronoun:
First Person Singular
English has two of these. Why the fuck do we have two first person singular pronouns? It pisses me off, and the distinction between them can already be gained from the structure of the sentence, so it doesn't actually convey any new information. The two first person singular pronouns are "I" and "me", and there is plenty wrong with both of them. For a start, "I" is the only word that I have to use a capital letter for when it's not at the beginning of a sentence. That's stupid.
The second thing that bothers me about them is the meaningless distinction: "I" is the first person objective singular, "me" is the first person subjective singular. That is, you use "I" when the first person singular is in the subject of the sentence ("I threw the ball") and you use "me" when the first person singular is the object of the sentence ("the ball threw me"). But the thing about that is that English has rigid sentence structure - that is, the object and the subject are obvious from their position in the sentence! For instance, if I were to say "me threw the ball", you would know exactly what it means immediately as I say it, just as you would if I were to say "the ball threw I".
I therefore propose the abolition of me.
First Person Singular Possessive
We have two of these as well! "My" and "mine" are the two first person singular possessive, and once again, they are used in the subject and the object of the sentence. That would be incredibly useful if English had free-form grammar, but it does not.
That said, my complaints about these two go beyond my complaints about "me" and "I". With any noun, there's no separate form for the possessive but rather a simple conjugation: apostrophe-S. The ball that belongs to I is "my ball", but the ball that belongs to the cat is "the cat's ball". Why don't we conjugate our pronouns like that, making it "I's ball"? It adheres to the same general rule as the nouns, after all.
I therefore propose the abolition of my and mine and the implementation of I's.
First Person Plural
This one is yet another example of object-versus-subject being stupid("we" and "us"), but it is also the first example of language being too ambiguous. Take the following sentence: "We are going to the movies". Is the person being spoken to included within the group that is going to the movies? The inclusive and exclusive forms of the first person plural could very easily be their own pronouns, but they're not, because English is a fucking stupid language.
I therefore propose that "we" refer to the exclusive form, as in "we but not you are playing a game" and "us" refer to the inclusive form, "us including you are playing a game".
First Person Plural Possessive
"Our" and "ours" are the culmination of everything wrong in English first person pronouns. They are irregular, they are separated by object-vs-subject bullshit and they are highly ambiguous about clusivity. What makes these two words particularly egregious, though, is that they pretend to be regular: "Ours" cleverly masquerades as the plural of "our" by being the same word but conjugated for the plural all while ignoring the fact that "our" is already a fucking plural word.
As with the singulars, I propose that we stick with the grammatical conjugations for nouns when extending our new non-possessive pronouns into possessive pronouns: "we's" and "us's", the latter of which I fully expect to become pronounced as "uz" if this actually takes off as a concept (which it won't).
Second Person
There is no distinction between second person singular and second person plural. This has absolutely always bothered I, and I hate it more than the lack of difference between inclusive and exclusive in the first person plural. There is no difference in English between "what are you doing?" and "what are you doing?", despite the fact that one of them refers to only the person listening and the other refers to the person listening and other people.
Some dialects introduce "y'all" as an exclusively second-person plural while still continuing to use "you" as both plural and singular. I like it, but want to discontinue using "you" in plural contexts. This also means that "you is" will become grammatically correct, which it should be anyway.
On the bright side, at least there's no distinction between the subject and the object.
Second Person Possessive
There is one one of these, "your". I's complaints here are just rehashes of old complaints, and so I'll just state I's solutions: "you's" and "y'all's".
Third Person Singular
There are too fucking many of these, in contrast with the second person pronouns. Where first person just had distinctions between when the pronoun was in the subject and the object, third person has an insane system of grammatical gender: It is the only place in English to have four genders (grammatically). They are male ("he"/"him"), female ("she"/"her"), neuter/sterile ("it") and unknown/nonbinary ("they"/"them"). This is absolutely fucking insane and is far too many.
I propose, in addition to the abolition of the subject/object distinction, the abolition of the entire fucking grammatical gender system. There is actually only one other place I can think of in English with grammar, and it's the words "blond" and "blonde" when referring to someone's hair colour. The one-and-only third person singular pronoun should therefore be either "he" or "she", as long as only one is used and is consistently used for everyone.
Third Person Singular Possessive
The third person singular possessive maintains the bullshit gender system of the nominative, but there are some parts that he gets better and some that he gets worse. For instance, the masculine form "his" lacks any subject/object distinction and "its" is only missing an apostrophe to conform to the regular method of making words possessive. On the other hand, there are some things that he gets worse: The feminine "her/hers" is exactly the same as the nominative's objective in its subject, which just fucks with I's head to think about.
I propose getting rid of all of these except for "his".
Third Person Plural
There are only two pronouns in this case: "They" and "them", distinguished by subject/object. Abolish "them", keep "they".
I'd finish, but I'm getting bored of this.
First Person Singular
English has two of these. Why the fuck do we have two first person singular pronouns? It pisses me off, and the distinction between them can already be gained from the structure of the sentence, so it doesn't actually convey any new information. The two first person singular pronouns are "I" and "me", and there is plenty wrong with both of them. For a start, "I" is the only word that I have to use a capital letter for when it's not at the beginning of a sentence. That's stupid.
The second thing that bothers me about them is the meaningless distinction: "I" is the first person objective singular, "me" is the first person subjective singular. That is, you use "I" when the first person singular is in the subject of the sentence ("I threw the ball") and you use "me" when the first person singular is the object of the sentence ("the ball threw me"). But the thing about that is that English has rigid sentence structure - that is, the object and the subject are obvious from their position in the sentence! For instance, if I were to say "me threw the ball", you would know exactly what it means immediately as I say it, just as you would if I were to say "the ball threw I".
I therefore propose the abolition of me.
First Person Singular Possessive
We have two of these as well! "My" and "mine" are the two first person singular possessive, and once again, they are used in the subject and the object of the sentence. That would be incredibly useful if English had free-form grammar, but it does not.
That said, my complaints about these two go beyond my complaints about "me" and "I". With any noun, there's no separate form for the possessive but rather a simple conjugation: apostrophe-S. The ball that belongs to I is "my ball", but the ball that belongs to the cat is "the cat's ball". Why don't we conjugate our pronouns like that, making it "I's ball"? It adheres to the same general rule as the nouns, after all.
I therefore propose the abolition of my and mine and the implementation of I's.
First Person Plural
This one is yet another example of object-versus-subject being stupid("we" and "us"), but it is also the first example of language being too ambiguous. Take the following sentence: "We are going to the movies". Is the person being spoken to included within the group that is going to the movies? The inclusive and exclusive forms of the first person plural could very easily be their own pronouns, but they're not, because English is a fucking stupid language.
I therefore propose that "we" refer to the exclusive form, as in "we but not you are playing a game" and "us" refer to the inclusive form, "us including you are playing a game".
First Person Plural Possessive
"Our" and "ours" are the culmination of everything wrong in English first person pronouns. They are irregular, they are separated by object-vs-subject bullshit and they are highly ambiguous about clusivity. What makes these two words particularly egregious, though, is that they pretend to be regular: "Ours" cleverly masquerades as the plural of "our" by being the same word but conjugated for the plural all while ignoring the fact that "our" is already a fucking plural word.
As with the singulars, I propose that we stick with the grammatical conjugations for nouns when extending our new non-possessive pronouns into possessive pronouns: "we's" and "us's", the latter of which I fully expect to become pronounced as "uz" if this actually takes off as a concept (which it won't).
Second Person
There is no distinction between second person singular and second person plural. This has absolutely always bothered I, and I hate it more than the lack of difference between inclusive and exclusive in the first person plural. There is no difference in English between "what are you doing?" and "what are you doing?", despite the fact that one of them refers to only the person listening and the other refers to the person listening and other people.
Some dialects introduce "y'all" as an exclusively second-person plural while still continuing to use "you" as both plural and singular. I like it, but want to discontinue using "you" in plural contexts. This also means that "you is" will become grammatically correct, which it should be anyway.
On the bright side, at least there's no distinction between the subject and the object.
Second Person Possessive
There is one one of these, "your". I's complaints here are just rehashes of old complaints, and so I'll just state I's solutions: "you's" and "y'all's".
Third Person Singular
There are too fucking many of these, in contrast with the second person pronouns. Where first person just had distinctions between when the pronoun was in the subject and the object, third person has an insane system of grammatical gender: It is the only place in English to have four genders (grammatically). They are male ("he"/"him"), female ("she"/"her"), neuter/sterile ("it") and unknown/nonbinary ("they"/"them"). This is absolutely fucking insane and is far too many.
I propose, in addition to the abolition of the subject/object distinction, the abolition of the entire fucking grammatical gender system. There is actually only one other place I can think of in English with grammar, and it's the words "blond" and "blonde" when referring to someone's hair colour. The one-and-only third person singular pronoun should therefore be either "he" or "she", as long as only one is used and is consistently used for everyone.
Third Person Singular Possessive
The third person singular possessive maintains the bullshit gender system of the nominative, but there are some parts that he gets better and some that he gets worse. For instance, the masculine form "his" lacks any subject/object distinction and "its" is only missing an apostrophe to conform to the regular method of making words possessive. On the other hand, there are some things that he gets worse: The feminine "her/hers" is exactly the same as the nominative's objective in its subject, which just fucks with I's head to think about.
I propose getting rid of all of these except for "his".
Third Person Plural
There are only two pronouns in this case: "They" and "them", distinguished by subject/object. Abolish "them", keep "they".
I'd finish, but I'm getting bored of this.
