The fascinating backstory behind our pronouns

We throw around “he”, “her”, and “them”. others? They are newcomers in languages ​​with fascinating backstories including false identity, Vikings, and evolution sex With English grammar. The stories behind these little words may change how you view them.

More on old English gender

In the old English era, the default third party synonym was the masculine form “hē”. Because in older English, nouns and pronouns needed grammatical gender marks as historically related Germans do today. Masculine forms were always used as default forms. Therefore, in the old English, “hē” was used to refer to men. Sex Of those mentioned, it was unknown.

To refer to a woman (what is a “she” in modern English), Old English used a feminine derivative of this masculine form, namely “hēo.” Similarly, “It”, the modern inhuman pronoun, was “hit”, a castrated form of masculine “Hē”. Over time, “Hit” lost its “H” sound and was simply declared as “it” which is still in use today.

However, whenever a pronoun was needed to talk about multiple people (i.e. “them” today), all three were integrated into a single form of “Hie.” As you can imagine, in a fast speech it was easy to mistake “hē”, “hīo” and “hi”.

Such overlapping pronunciation, especially the sound changes, removed the final vowel of the word, caused wider sounds, causing confusion in listeners in that the pronouns were intended by the speaker, making it difficult to pinpoint the gender and number of people the speaker is referring to. answer? I come up with some new options.

Two new pronouns

So, if English is not a pronoun that began, how did “she” and “they” enter our everyday speech? Just as most new words arrive, through reuse of existing words or borrowing words from another language.

As mentioned earlier, Old English had a grammatical gender in words. This means that all pronouns including demonstration (i.e., words such as “this” or “it” had a specific form of gender. The female third-person pronoun was “hē”, and after all, the feminine empirical pronoun used to mean “it” when paired with a grammatically feminine noun was “sēo”, which rhymes closely.

Its exact evolution is a bit vague, but due to the fact that they are both feminine marked pronouns and were pronounced very similarly, the meaning of “seo” began to overlap the meaning of “heo”.

The new “them”

As for the modern synonym “them”, it began life in English as borrowed from anyone but from someone often known as the Viking. Most of these Scandinavians who settled in northern England spoke Germanic language called Old North. In older Scandinavians, the multiple pronouns of third persons were “thei/theim.”

Given the more distinct pronunciation from the old English “hē”, this Nordic pronoun began to be used by English speakers in the Northern region rather than “hie” as a plural pronoun. Gradually, the Nordic “thei” form spread south, and by the 14th century “hies” were rare and “they” were everywhere.

As early as the 13th century, this new plural pronoun, “they” was sometimes used as something called the epicene pronoun. In other words, rather than referring to multiple people, it was used as a substitute for the general singular “he.” Even Chaucer adopted “they” in such a way when referring to “anyone” (a singular indefinite pronoun traditionally replaced by “he”) in his famous “he.” Canterbury Tales.

It’s just one of many changes in the future

The pronouns “she” and “they” may have been part of the first, but they were far from the last example of a changing pronoun in English history. After all, how many people call you, “you,” or “you”?

The conclusion is that pronouns may not change as frequently as verbs and nouns, but history shows that our changing pronouns are part of the way language morphs to suit the needs of our speakers.