E loves Em only for Eir body

"It's not the end of the world, Lali." Said K.

"But it is an indication that the end is nigh," I said gloomily.

I was moaning about yet another butchering of English as she is spoke, as I read the morning papers. K was trying to console me.

Language evolves. But when you consider what prompts the evolution, it makes you wonder.

Prejudices are funny things. Bias-free language will require gymnastics like calling a manhole a 'utility access aperture' and referring to blind people as being 'visually challenged'.

There was a time when moron and cretin were definitions of mental acuity rather than derogatory terms, and then they became politically incorrect in respect of the subnormal intelligence. But this is going to absurd lengths.

I was outraged when I found that the vintage first edition of Doctor Spock I had been gifted as motherhood present had been reissued with emendations and substitutions of 'she' randomly for the universal pronoun 'he'.

Whether in baby books or loftier works, it had always been a convention to use the pronoun 'he' to encompass both genders. To find Doctor Spock revised to satisfy feminist sentiments and political correctness was something of a rude shock.

Good grief. 'He' is just conventional usage, after all. Does calling it personslaughter or womanslaughter make manslaughter any better? Manicure, manufacture or manacle- all have etymological roots in Latin, no gender bias.

Do we really want gamestership when we mean gamesmanship? Do we want to assign a piece of furniture a different nomenclature and call it a tallperson rather than a tallboy? Do we want terminological inexactitudes and euphemisms rather than clear words that mean what they mean?

"You are being a Bong, honey." I teased K when he mixed up 'he' and 'she' yet again. I don't blame him. Bengali is quirky. 'He', 'she' and 'it' are all the same in Bengali. Yesterday and tomorrow are the same too. Very philosophical, I am sure.

I ought not to be casting stones, though. My mother tongue equates women with things in speech. Masculine gender is one thing but feminine and neuter are the same. It is a quirk of Telugu. Hindi is more generous: nouns have genders, and you can be gender specific in speech. But then Hindi is the language where it is possible to confuse yesterday with tomorrow, too. They needn't preen. Tamil has gender specific usage, too.

"I suppose I ought to convert to Spivak's grammar." K said. "Huh? Is this one of your tall tales?" I asked, rather suspiciously, I must admit. K then proceeded to educate me.

Michael Spivak (a hotshot mathematician apparently) wrote a textbook/manual for TeX, way back when it was a new thing and needed to be explained. He called it the "Joy of TeX ".

Mathematicians love their puns and worse, and I do mean worse.

Spivak decided, I was told, that since TeX was an entirely new approach to typesetting, to evolve a revolutionary approach to non SeXist terminology. He assigned E as the third person singular, regardless of gender, just like 'I' is the first person singular, regardless of gender. He then went on to assign 'Em' for 'them' and 'Eir' for 'their', and actually used the title of my post as an example of all three forms.

"Since Tex is a rather revolutionary approach to typesetting, I decided that a rather revolutionary approach to non SeXist terminology would be appropriate in this manual. I am myself completely unprejudiced, of course. As Mark Twain said, or should have said: All I care to know is that a man or woman is a human being- that is enough for me; he or she can't be any worse. But I hated having to say "he or she" or "his or her" or use awkward circumlocutions. Numerous approaches to this problem have been suggested, but one strikes me as particularly simple and sensible. Just as 'I' is the first person singular pronoun, regardless of gender, so "E' will be used in this book as the third person singular pronoun for both genders. Thus, 'E' is the singular of 'they'. Accordingly, 'Eir' (pronounced to rhyme with 'their') will be the possessive, and 'Em' (rhyming with 'them') will stand for either 'him' or 'her'. Here is an example that illustrates all three forms:

E loves Em only for Eir body."

He further set an exercise, like mathematicians do: How many possible meanings does this sentence have?

The mind boggles, I tell you.

Cheers!