Inclusive language gets sillier

Tracey at Worship Naked has a post that almost made my head explode. She started out, last week, with an English quiz that was pretty simple, but now she’s moved on to something about Zie Zim Zir/Zirs Zimself – new words and forms meant to protect the delicate sensibilities of the neo-victorian prudes who have a case of the vapors if they hear a rude masculine form.

But I will let Tracey explain:

“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.)

But because I’m oh-so-up on these things…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 Object Possessive Pronoun Reflexive

Zie Zim Zir/Zirs Zimself

(They) (Them) (Their/Theirs) (Themselves)

So…in that problematic sentence from our quiz, it would now read:

“Every person is entitled to zir own opinion.”

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.”

How about, “ask the first clerk you find to tell you the price.”

Silly me. :-)

UPDATE: Gerald at Cafeteria Closed was raised in Austria and has a little fun with all of this.