fastened upon self in the third person masculine and neuter is one of the mysteries of language, but there it is, and so, against all logic, history and grammatical regularity, himself, them- selves and itself (not its-self) are in favor today. But the American, as usual, inclines against these illogical exceptions to the rule set by myself. I constantly hear hisself and their- selves, as in "he done it hisself" and "they don't know their- selves." Sometimes their self is substituted for theirselves, as in "they all seen it their self ." Also, the emphatic own is often inserted between the pronoun and the noun, as in "let every man save his own self."
The American pronoun does not necessarily agree with its noun in number. I find "I can tell each one what they make," "each fellow put their foot on the line," "nobody can do what they like" and "she was one of these kind of people" in Char- ters, and "I am not the kind of man that is always thinking about their record," "if he was to hit a man in the head . . . they would think their nose tickled" in Lardner. At the bot- tom of this error there is a real difficulty : the lack of a pronoun of the true common gender in English, corresponding to the French soi and son. His, after a noun or pronoun connoting both sexes, often sounds inept, and his-or-her is intolerably clumsy. Thus the inaccurate plural is often substituted. The brothers Fowler have discovered "anybody else who have only themselves in view" in Richardson and "everybody is discon- tented with their lot" in Disraeli, and Ruskin once wrote "if a customer wishes you to injure their foot." In spoken Amer- ican, even the most careful, they and their often appear; I turn to the Congressional Record at random and in two minutes find "if anyone will look at the bank statements they will see."[1] In the lower reaches of the language the plural seems to get into every sentence of any complexity, even when the preceding noun or pronoun is plainly singular.
- ↑ "Hon." Edward E. Browne, of Wisconsin, in the House of Representatives, July 18, 1918, p. 9965.
