The Byrd Chronicles

In this day and age, it’s ridiculous that there is no non-gender specific third-person singular. Grammatically, you use ‘he’ or ‘him’ when you don’t know or it is a generic person. But political correctness puts the kybosh on that.

Careful writers avoid the situation, often by pluralizing the sentence and using “them” or “they.” Careless writers just use “they” or “them.” Writers with a tin ear use “one” and mindless PC slaves (textbook writers, for instance) use “she” based on some twisted notion that simply changing the sex makes it ok. But it’s just as sexist and now it’s grammatically incorrect too.

What this language needs is a new word, and I’m proposing one here. I looked at Spanish, Latin, French, German, English, and Esperanto and tried to merge them.

So from here on in, wherever in this column I need a non-gender specific third-person singular, I will use de (hard ‘e’, like dee) for he/she, hes (soft ‘e’, like Tess) for his/hers, ler (the 'er' like hair or glare or Jim Lehr(er)) for him/her, and lerself (same 'air' sound) for himself/herself.

And if I ever get any readers, it might one day matter.