How should the following statement be completed?
If anyone cannot attend the training seminar next week, ___ should contact HR for alternate training arrangements.There are several options. I personally prefer the simplicity of the "universal he," but it does make many women grit their teeth, and I risk offending my audience when I use it. He or she works fine once or twice, but if the memo extends to a few paragraphs, repeating he or she becomes tiresome and clunky. They is a reasonable solution, but it also has great potential for incorrect usage when the memo writer simply inserts it without recasting the first half of the sentence with plurals.
In recent weeks, an alternate solution has once again been in the news and popping up in search engine results for "English language." Jake Shivery promotes the use of hu, the one-size-fits-all of the pronoun world. This invented pronoun is intended to stand for gender-specific pronouns, resulting in much simpler constructions.
While a genderless singular pronoun would undoubtedly be easy to learn for non-native English users, linguistic history tells us it is very unlikely to be adopted by current fluent speakers. It's true English speakers readily accept new vocabulary as it organically enter common usage. But I can't imagine English users would adopt a new pronoun just because it is available. Our current options may be unwieldy at times, but they are not hard to apply correctly with a minimum of brain work. Hu is clever but unnecessary.
Language just doesn't take well to deliberate change. Can you think of a single word--other than new product or technology names--that was intentionally introduced and actually stuck? A little research reveals only a handful, notably the name prefix Ms. Successful introductions are indeed uncommon.
If hu is to be adopted, it is already taking a long time. The Web site that houses Shivery's proposal has been around for several years, yet many people never heard of hu before a new article about it appeared in a number of newspapers around the country last month. (See Southeastern Virginia's local reaction to the article here.) Hu would need many more exposures in mainstream media before it became widely known, and many more than that before it began to be used in everyday language.
Perhaps if a recognized personality were to use hu in a university convocation speech, political debate, or other widely publicized forum, the pronoun would soar to instant recognition. But even then, the buzz would more likely generate parody than scholarly discussion.
Many comments (See here) ranging from thoughtful to incredulous have appeared thus far. On balance, they confirm that the English-speaking world is simply not prepared to accept this unnatural pronoun. I can't help but agree.
© 2007 by AnnaLisa Michalski