In its satirical book Gender, the Babylon Bee offers “The Comprehensive Handbook to Men, Women, and Millions of New Genders We Just made Up!” The book is dedicated to “The Babylon Bee’s ‘Man of the Year’: Rachel Levine,” HHS’s Admiral. No doubt Rachel is used to such derision, but shim seems capable of weathering such a verbal storm. Shim is a real doctor, and shim has made a personal choice with which no non-transgender person can argue on the grounds of perspective. If shim is happy, that’s all that counts as long as shim does shim’s job.
At Levine’s confirmation hearing, Senator Dr. Rand Paul questioned shim about allowing trans surgeries on children. Shim’s answer was that it was a conversation shim was willing to have with the senator, but my guess is that the two never held that talk. Shim was confirmed, and now shim’s department seems to have issued the mandates on pronouns and restroom facilities. I say “seems” because this is an age of misinformation, an age of AI under the control of anyone with the wherewithal to manipulate computers, and an age of a Press too afraid to question any policy of a Democrat Administration.
The policy includes the use of restrooms by preference. Think you’re male? Use the door marked “Men.” Think you’re female? use the door marked “Women.” Think you prefer one or the other on any given day? Use whatever facility you want. Nothing like shoes pointing in opposite directions in adjacent stalls!
A Living Language Changes
In a living language, words, spelling, grammar, and syntax change through conscious and unconscious selection, much like artificial hybridization of animals and plants imposed on natural random genetic variations. In its evolution, English pronouns have undergone change, and there’s no reason to believe they won’t undergo further change.
“Traditionalists” and current users balk at adopting new forms in any human endeavor simply because habit is a strong motivator. Some 1.5 billion English speakers, both first-language and second-language communicators, are used to the pronouns they learned when they began to speak and write the language. For them, which means for all but the smallest percentage of English speakers, he is a masculine pronoun that refers to a biological male; she, a feminine pronoun.
With the exception of hermaphroditic humans, most people are born either male or female. Combos occur only slightly more frequently than filet mignon on a MacDonald’s menu. Few humans have encountered true hermaphroditic people, so the common mindset is that humans come in two versions with complementary organs that facilitate reproduction. This physical fact underlies centuries of language development during which the majority determines acceptable language. If nearly all the 1.5 billion English speakers, following on the heels of previous English speakers who taught them, accept the words, spellings, syntax, and grammar they learned, then those speakers determine the language—of the present, which is the language of the immediate and ancient past. To its Indo-European origins, English has added medieval Anglo-Saxon and Frisian, the Middle English of Chaucer’s time, Shakespeare’s Renaissance English, and current Modern English with its plethora of Industrial and Technological Age neologisms all linking as the context for usage in the twenty-first century.
It’s in this historical context that the HHS emailed mandates in an attempt to impose a “new English.” And history shows that conscious selection can change language as banned words indicate. Such deliberate word changes accompany unconscious adoption of words like normalcy for the pre-Teddy Roosevelt normality and athleticism for various terms for prowess on the fields of play, such as agility, strength, and quickness.
The History of English Pronouns
English has different kinds of pronouns. They evolved from a language that originally identified words as “masculine” or “feminine” the way Latin did and its offspring romance languages now do. Thus, English has “personal pronouns” that are clearly one or the other: Masculine he (nominative or subject case), his (possessive or genitive case), him (objective, indirect objective, accusative or dative case), and feminine personal pronoun corollaries, she, her, hers, and her, the last one serving as an “objective case” pronoun. These “singular number” pronouns have common plurals: They, their, theirs, and them, all “third person” pronouns.
English lost the dative, indirect object, case during its transition from an inflected language to a largely un-inflected language. Those who learned Latin, for example, had to memorize nominative, possessive, objective, dative, and ablative forms of words in declensions. No doubt even among Romans, there were those who failed to use those forms in the traditional and formal manners. A modern equivalent of misuse of pronoun and verb number agreement lies in the oft-heard “it don’t,” “he don’t,” and “she don’t,” or in the UK, “he were” (which is acceptable in a subjunctive mood “if he were” as a statement of an unreal condition, such as “If I were you…”). Most "educated people" recognize that faulty number agreement (between pronoun and antecedent) is substandard English, but now HHS will force all to accept the fault as normal in "they doesn't" (for a person whose pronoun of choice is "they").
Probably the most commonly known pronoun change can be seen in the second person personal pronoun that the King James Version and some of its followers use: We can associate the Amish use of ye, thy, and thine with Old and Middle English. The use of ye for you represents an earlier form of the second person personal pronoun. And spelling has similarly changed in recognizable ways: hem becoming him, hir becoming her. And even the letters themselves have undergone change, as the Old English thorn or þorn (Þ, þ) became the th in them. Those forms of our Late Modern English for the third person plural personal pronouns were ðe, ðem, ðer, and ðerz, with ð representing the digraph th.
So, yes, pronouns have changed over the centuries since the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians peopled western Europe and the British Isles. And there were many influences on this Germanic language, from Scandinavian to Romance languages. Will we now see a new major influence in the form of a US government official language? In an HHS-mandated language? And how severe will the punishments be for a slip of the tongue based on tradition, habit, and common sense? If the judge is Rachel Levine, could a conscientious objector get a fair deal?
Where Are We Headed?
Will HHS also mandate changes in the other kinds of pronouns in addition to personal pronouns? What will it decree or ban among relative (who, etc.), reflexive (himself, etc.), or reciprocal (each other, etc.), demonstrative (this, etc.), interrogative (what? etc.), intensive (again, himself, etc), and indefinite (some, any, etc.) pronouns? Will HHS become a school unto itself and we the pupils? Will it add to the mandates like wearing not one, not two, but three masks while infusions of vaccines course through our veins?
As in the Past
As it has over the past 15 centuries, English will change over the next 15 centuries. Some of those changes will occur over decades or centuries; some will occur after a single decree by the prevailing political class. But in their attempt to accommodate everyone, they will eventually erase the connection between words and realities. They will appease a few by quashing the rest. Their intentions will be noble, but their results will be a stilted language and a suppressed people.
At Levine’s confirmation hearing, Senator Dr. Rand Paul questioned shim about allowing trans surgeries on children. Shim’s answer was that it was a conversation shim was willing to have with the senator, but my guess is that the two never held that talk. Shim was confirmed, and now shim’s department seems to have issued the mandates on pronouns and restroom facilities. I say “seems” because this is an age of misinformation, an age of AI under the control of anyone with the wherewithal to manipulate computers, and an age of a Press too afraid to question any policy of a Democrat Administration.
The policy includes the use of restrooms by preference. Think you’re male? Use the door marked “Men.” Think you’re female? use the door marked “Women.” Think you prefer one or the other on any given day? Use whatever facility you want. Nothing like shoes pointing in opposite directions in adjacent stalls!
A Living Language Changes
In a living language, words, spelling, grammar, and syntax change through conscious and unconscious selection, much like artificial hybridization of animals and plants imposed on natural random genetic variations. In its evolution, English pronouns have undergone change, and there’s no reason to believe they won’t undergo further change.
“Traditionalists” and current users balk at adopting new forms in any human endeavor simply because habit is a strong motivator. Some 1.5 billion English speakers, both first-language and second-language communicators, are used to the pronouns they learned when they began to speak and write the language. For them, which means for all but the smallest percentage of English speakers, he is a masculine pronoun that refers to a biological male; she, a feminine pronoun.
With the exception of hermaphroditic humans, most people are born either male or female. Combos occur only slightly more frequently than filet mignon on a MacDonald’s menu. Few humans have encountered true hermaphroditic people, so the common mindset is that humans come in two versions with complementary organs that facilitate reproduction. This physical fact underlies centuries of language development during which the majority determines acceptable language. If nearly all the 1.5 billion English speakers, following on the heels of previous English speakers who taught them, accept the words, spellings, syntax, and grammar they learned, then those speakers determine the language—of the present, which is the language of the immediate and ancient past. To its Indo-European origins, English has added medieval Anglo-Saxon and Frisian, the Middle English of Chaucer’s time, Shakespeare’s Renaissance English, and current Modern English with its plethora of Industrial and Technological Age neologisms all linking as the context for usage in the twenty-first century.
It’s in this historical context that the HHS emailed mandates in an attempt to impose a “new English.” And history shows that conscious selection can change language as banned words indicate. Such deliberate word changes accompany unconscious adoption of words like normalcy for the pre-Teddy Roosevelt normality and athleticism for various terms for prowess on the fields of play, such as agility, strength, and quickness.
The History of English Pronouns
English has different kinds of pronouns. They evolved from a language that originally identified words as “masculine” or “feminine” the way Latin did and its offspring romance languages now do. Thus, English has “personal pronouns” that are clearly one or the other: Masculine he (nominative or subject case), his (possessive or genitive case), him (objective, indirect objective, accusative or dative case), and feminine personal pronoun corollaries, she, her, hers, and her, the last one serving as an “objective case” pronoun. These “singular number” pronouns have common plurals: They, their, theirs, and them, all “third person” pronouns.
English lost the dative, indirect object, case during its transition from an inflected language to a largely un-inflected language. Those who learned Latin, for example, had to memorize nominative, possessive, objective, dative, and ablative forms of words in declensions. No doubt even among Romans, there were those who failed to use those forms in the traditional and formal manners. A modern equivalent of misuse of pronoun and verb number agreement lies in the oft-heard “it don’t,” “he don’t,” and “she don’t,” or in the UK, “he were” (which is acceptable in a subjunctive mood “if he were” as a statement of an unreal condition, such as “If I were you…”). Most "educated people" recognize that faulty number agreement (between pronoun and antecedent) is substandard English, but now HHS will force all to accept the fault as normal in "they doesn't" (for a person whose pronoun of choice is "they").
Probably the most commonly known pronoun change can be seen in the second person personal pronoun that the King James Version and some of its followers use: We can associate the Amish use of ye, thy, and thine with Old and Middle English. The use of ye for you represents an earlier form of the second person personal pronoun. And spelling has similarly changed in recognizable ways: hem becoming him, hir becoming her. And even the letters themselves have undergone change, as the Old English thorn or þorn (Þ, þ) became the th in them. Those forms of our Late Modern English for the third person plural personal pronouns were ðe, ðem, ðer, and ðerz, with ð representing the digraph th.
So, yes, pronouns have changed over the centuries since the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians peopled western Europe and the British Isles. And there were many influences on this Germanic language, from Scandinavian to Romance languages. Will we now see a new major influence in the form of a US government official language? In an HHS-mandated language? And how severe will the punishments be for a slip of the tongue based on tradition, habit, and common sense? If the judge is Rachel Levine, could a conscientious objector get a fair deal?
Where Are We Headed?
Will HHS also mandate changes in the other kinds of pronouns in addition to personal pronouns? What will it decree or ban among relative (who, etc.), reflexive (himself, etc.), or reciprocal (each other, etc.), demonstrative (this, etc.), interrogative (what? etc.), intensive (again, himself, etc), and indefinite (some, any, etc.) pronouns? Will HHS become a school unto itself and we the pupils? Will it add to the mandates like wearing not one, not two, but three masks while infusions of vaccines course through our veins?
As in the Past
As it has over the past 15 centuries, English will change over the next 15 centuries. Some of those changes will occur over decades or centuries; some will occur after a single decree by the prevailing political class. But in their attempt to accommodate everyone, they will eventually erase the connection between words and realities. They will appease a few by quashing the rest. Their intentions will be noble, but their results will be a stilted language and a suppressed people.
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