You know, the things we have next to our usernames. This is an unedited stream of consciousness. I have been stewing on this for hours ever since I noticed that sometimes people post grammatically incorrect pronoun sets.
Case study: 3-word sets
Let us compare the three most commonly-seen pronoun sets: they/them/their, he/him/his, and she/her/… uhhhh it all falls apart around this point.
They are playing a game.
I am meeting them at the park.
We went to their house for dinner.
He is playing a game.
I am meeting him at the park.
We went to his house for dinner.
So far so good. But then we get to she, which is extremely often represented as she/her/hers:
She is playing a game.
I am meeting her at the park.
We went to hers house for dinner.
And that last one clearly isn’t right. So it should be she/her/her to be in line with the other two sets.
Yes, his functions in both roles, but I think it makes more sense to have the their type of word in the set of three, since it’s more common.
If you wanted to get extremely verbose to properly demonstrate what I’m talking about, we could make them into sets of four, with the fourth one being the hers type (sorry I don’t remember what the fancy names are for grammar terms):
they/them/their/theirs
he/him/his/his
she/her/her/hers
Case study: 2-word sets
Two-word pronoun sets are much more popular, and in the case of our previous examples all simply drop the last word from the three-word set:
they/them
he/him
she/her
No problems here. But I often see people say “it/its” (or worse, “it/it’s”), when if you follow the same pattern of all the other sets, it should clearly be it/it!!!
It is playing a game.
I am meeting it at the park.
We went to its house for dinner.
Anyway, [🔥 English]; thank you for reading.
The problem is really that 3 isn’t enough. It should be they/them/their/theirs, he/him/his/his and she/her/her/hers to capture the main forms of the primary 3rd person pronoun sets.
They went to the store. I went to the store with them. Their sibling came along. The world is theirs now.
He went to the store. I went to the store with him. His sibling came along. The world is his now.
She went to the store. I went to the store with her. Her sibling came along. The world is hers now.
This is my only issue with most people who use neopronouns. 2 forms is insufficient, give me 4 minimum.