Some years ago when I lived in Sweden, I was told that in the main language of neighbouring Finland (i.e. Finnish, as opposed to Swedish, which is also an official language there) there are only two pronouns: one personal, denoting ‘he/she’ for people; and one impersonal, denoting ‘it’ for inanimate objects.

This, I felt, was a straightforward and sensible state of affairs and would also make writing far easier, because it disposes with the perennial awkwardness of personal pronouns when the context is indeterminate, i.e. the story has not revealed whether the person is a he or a she, or is dealing with a group that includes both—which is frequently the case in Derai society. (I feel that the Derai language would definitely take a Finnish approach to pronouns.)

Although the now old-fashioned use of “he”, in English, to include “she” may appear to achieve the same end as the Finnish he/she I don’t feel that it does. This is because the English tradition of separate pronouns means that the “she” is being artificially subsumed by the “he”, as opposed to the Finnish situation where one pronoun has evolved to mean both.

To avoid having to cumbersomely write “he or she”, “his or hers” I naturally incline to using “they” and “their.” They/them is also an approach being adopted by those who choose not to identify as a specific gender. However, I have been corrected for the they/their usage in the past, although the mighty Merriam Webster has pronounced recently on the “they” usage being A-OK—at the same time pointing out that it’s centuries old.

original, 1904 cover

However, I was recently reminded of another alternative that appears to have been acceptable in the past, but which I’d forgotten since it has been Very Many Years Indeed since I last looked between the covers of an E Nesbit book.

You know,  E Nesbit, the  awesome force in children’s writing from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, whose Five Children series juxtaposed magic with childhood adventures. Anyway, I recently unearthed a tattered copy of The Phoenix and the Carpet from one of the post-earthquake era boxes that are still waiting to be unpacked — and in dipping into it, discovered this:

“Then all the fireworks were put on the table, and each of the four children shut its very tight and put out its hand and grasped something.”

Not “his or her”, dear readers, and not “their” either (there being four children at this juncture of the story, two girls and two boys), but “its.”

Needless to say I was quite fascinated (enough to keep skimming and see it crop up consistently throughout the story), both because the awkwardness of “he or she” is obviously a longstanding problem for authors and because “its” must have been an acceptable alternative at the time E Nesbit was writing.

And because I do love words and language, and the history and evolution of both, I decided I had to share “its” with you. 😀