Well, we got into a bit of a grammar discussion here after I posted that li’l English quiz awhile back. Some of you may remember the quiz wanted us to tell what was wrong with this sentence:
“Every person is entitled to their own opinion.”
Technically, what’s wrong with this sentence is the use of the plural pronoun “their” when the word “person” is singular. The traditional solutions to this problem have been either:
“Every person is entitled to his opinion.” (Using the masculine pronoun to cover everybody, but that’s not PC anymore.)
OR
“Every person is entitled to his or her own opinion.” (Using both pronouns so as not to offend the womens, but, admittedly, making a cumbersome construction.)
So because I’m oh-so-up on these things — and because I want to make all da peoples happy, I’m offering up those third-person singular gender-neutral pronouns favored by some. Let’s have a gander at them, shall we?
(And this is a genuine list. I did not make them up. These forms are being seriously considered for entree into our repressive, sexist language):
Subject – Zie – (They)
Object – Zim – (Them)
Possessive Pronoun – Zir/Zirs – (Their/Theirs)
Reflexive – Zimself – (Themselves)
So using these handy-dandy new thingies in that problematic sentence from our quiz, it would now read:
“Every person is entitled to zir own opinion.”
(I’m just curious. Would that rhyme with “her” or “here”?)
Or take a sentence like this:
“Ask the first clerk you find if he (or she) can tell you the price.”
(Remember, it’s incorrect to use “they” here, although many people would.)
And it now becomes:
“Ask the first clerk you find if zie can tell you the price.”
See? It’s just lovely. It’s all-inclusive. Compassionate, even. Forever sounding like wee silly asses is a small price to pay for sparing the feelings of the terribly sensitive among us, don’t you think? And now that I’ve shared, I feel gratified knowing that every reader of this blog can use these zimself.
And don’t panic. That buzzing sound in your head goes away eventually.