e: he or she ('s/he' could also be used only for the written word.)
I think, at least in America, we've already solved that by using "they/their/them" as a gender-neutral alternative to "he or she/his or her/him or her." Most of us now speak that way in informal conversation. And as a writer and editor of government documents (internal only) I can assure you that the practice has penetrated the written language as well.
This does give rise to some amusing signs: "Every child should wash their face after eating." The rather odd construction "theirself" has even been spotted.
I haven't looked in a stylebook to see if the authorities have weighed in on the issue.
em (or erm): him or her ('em' is based on 'them' for plural) ('erm' sound like 'her' and 'him' combined)
In Anglo-Saxon (or "Old English") the third-person plural pronoun started with H. It had several forms since Old Germanic had five grammatical cases, which have been reduced to four in Modern German. (English has lost cases completely, except in pronouns which have three: I/my/me, nominative/genitive/accusative.)
As English grammar was stripped and streamlined under the influence of Norman French after 1066, and at the same time its phonetics underwent a similar transition, the plural pronoun
hei became so similar to the singular pronoun "he" that it created confusion. So the English appropriated the pronouns from the language of the Norse immigrants who had established communities in the country's north and had a sizeable influence over the nation's language and other culture. This is where our they/their/them pronoun comes from.
The accusative case of the original pronoun
hei was
hem. It's been suggested that
'em is actually that original word, surviving with the H elided.
you (plural): yous or youse (currently, 'you' could be either singular or plural)
We've already done this with the second-person pronoun. "You" is both singular and plural--something that occurs in many languages as people struggle to create a "formal" or "polite" form of address. Compare French
vous or Russian
vy.
Only Quakers use the original singular form, "thou," outside of the liturgy. Of course they use the accusative form, "thee," which is consistent with our general use of the accusative plural form "you" instead of the nominative case "ye."
The problem with appropriating the plural pronoun for singular use is that sometimes you really want to make it clear that you mean plural. In regional variants of English people have filled the void by creating "you all," (commonly pronounced y'all, it comes complete with its own genitive form, y'all's), "mongst ye," "yous/youse," "you-uns" and other neologisms. None of these have become standard, but the most recent creation, "you guys," is rapidly approaching standard in the USA and perhaps Australia, but not in the U.K. It's even common in the White House.
Chinese is way ahead of us. The language's lack of gender extends even to its pronouns.
Ta means he, she or it. As a highly synthetic language it has no problem with the plural, which is built like all the other plural pronouns:
wo, wo-men, "I, we,"
ni, ni-men, "thou, you,"
ta, ta-men, "he/she/it, they."
which-possessive: ------ ('whose" is used for a person, not a thing. Any ideas?)
I long ago gave up and started using "whose" for things, having seen it already in use.
We can't get people to bother using "whom," so who cares about fine points any more?
guy (female casual): gyno
The word "guy" has an interesting etymology. It comes from Guy Fawkes, who launched the Gunpowder Plot, an event in a failed Catholic uprising in 17th-century England. Britons celebrate this triumph over the rebels on November 5 as Guy Fawkes Day (and various other names). It became customary to burn some unpopular figure in an effigy created by children out of a mask and old clothes or other rags. Eventually "Guy" became slang for an oddly dressed man, i.e., one who looked like Guy Fawkes, escaped from the pyre. For reasons unknown, today it is simply slang for "man."
The English name Guy was borrowed from the French. It is the French form of the Italian name Guido, which means "guide"--another form of the same word taken from Norman French. Apparently the Romans originally got it from the old Germanic word
wid, which is related to "wit."
The word "guy," meaning a wire, chain, etc., for steadying and
guiding an object while being moved, comes via a different route from the same source.
