3rd person pronouns and demonstratives

[pandunia-guru]

Pandunia v.3 came out already 9 months ago. Since then one thing has confused many people: Why da is both the 3rd person singular pronoun ('he, she') and the demonstrative pronoun ('this, that')? Its usage seems to confuse people because it has so broad meaning.

The reason why I made this design choice in the first place is that I tried to find a pronoun that would be recognizable for speakers of English and be gender-neutral. The only such word in English is they but it is markedly plural (or at least it used to be until recently) and Pandunia is not meant to be a language that would lack the singular–plural distinction in pronouns. So I created di from they for the 3rd person plural and da from that for the 3rd person singular. The same word ended up taking the meaning of the demonstrative pronoun too. Many languages in the world actually do that, they use the same pronoun to refer to things and people! Unfortunately it didn't work so well in Pandunia, because da and di were frequently used as noun phrase markers.

So to fix this problem I will introduce a new 3rd person singular pronoun he. It is pronounced /hə/, so its sound is sort of midway between the English male subject pronoun he /hi:/ and the female object pronoun her /hɜ:(ɹ)/. It's perfect, because Pandunia's he is used for all genders and for the subject and object alike. Remember that Pandunia is meant to be intelligible for speakers of the current international language, English, on the basic level. It's common that non-native speakers mix up he and she, him and her. So the new pronoun fits Pandunia perfectly.

At the same time I merge the singular and plural demonstrative pronouns da and di into one form, de /də/. Then de buk means 'this/that book' or 'these/those books' – or simply 'the book(s)'.

Some examples:

mi nou he. he es mi se frende.
/mi nou hə. hə es mi sə frendə./
'I know him or her. He or she is my friend.'

mi go do he evri den.
/mi go do hə evəri den/
'I go to him or her every day.'

[José Antonio Vergara]

I think that both 'he' and 'de' are good enough

[José Antonio Vergara]

actually, a generalized (without gender distinction)third person singular pronun is common in English pidgins: 'em' in Tok Pisin and 'im' in Nigerian Pidgin (which with 116 million L2 speakers is the 14th most spoken language, according to Ethnologue 2024 list: https://www.ethnologue.com/insights/ethnologue200/).

I think 'im' is beautiful:

Ìm kari nayf go.
S/he took the knife away.

Source: https://apics-online.info/valuesets/17-13

[pandunia-guru]

We had a long and heated debate about the pronoun /hə/ in Reddit and Discord forums. Most of it was because of its unfortunate spelling, he, which looks exactly like the English masculine pronoun. I summarize here some of my thinking.

My main point was and is that he is a compromise form of the English pronouns (he, she, him, her, his, her) – mainly phonetically, but one can't avoid seeing the similarity of the written forms in good and bad. The pronoun /hə/ is important, because English speaking people (especially those who have learned it for international communication) are supposed to understand spoken Pandunia to a significant extent without having to guess too much. Due to its high frequency, the 3rd person singular pronoun is one of the most important words for fluent comprehension. Relatively infrequent words, like world and chair, are less important for mutual intelligibility and can be borrowed from other languages. However, this doesn't change the fact that there are a lot of content words that are common to Pandunia and English. For one unfamiliar drink word, water, there are many familiar drink words, like coffee, beer, juice, cola, wine and whisky, because they are really international even if we don't count English.

[pandunia-guru]

I think that both 'he' and 'de' are good enough

I appreciate that opinion! Your other idea about im has occurred to other too.

There are six third person pronoun forms in English (besides the so called singular they).

1. he (masculine subjective)
2. she (feminine subjective)
3. him (masculine objective)
4. her (feminine objective)
5. his (masculine possessive)
6. her(s) (feminine possessive)

The form in Tok Pisin and Nigerian Pidgin is borrowed from one of them, the masculine objective form. In my opinion it's not ideal, because it is only masculine and unlike any other form. In the Guyanese Creole the 3rd person pronoun is hii or ii and it comes from the masculine subjective form. It is also not good, because it is masculine only.

I prefer a compromise form that is pronounced /hə/ and written he according to the regular spelling rules of Pandunia. It begins with the sound /h/ like 5/6 of the pronoun forms in English. Its written form he is included in 4/6 of the English forms. It is a logical compromise, and like all compromise forms, it is both familiar and strange at the same time. It's not too close to English and that's why it can have it's own identity and own meaning.

[pandunia-guru]

Finally I decided to adopt the pronoun forms hi 'he or she; him or her' and de 'they; them'.

hi is a compromise between English masculine and feminine pronoun forms he /hi:/, she /ʃi:/, him, her, his and her(s). 5/6 forms begin with h- and 4/6 forms have a kind of i vowel. hi is what you get when they are put together. The new pronoun is pronounced in the same way as English he, which could invite criticism for sexism. This can be countered by several facts. (1) hi or i is used in some English based pidgins and creoles, such as Cameroon Pidgin Engilsh (Kamtok) and Guyanese Creole. (2) /hi:/ is a feminine 3rd person pronoun in Semitic languages like Hebrew, Arabic and Maltese. (3) hi is a 3rd person feminine pronoun also in Welsh.

The 3rd person plural pronoun is now de, which is close to the English forms they and them. It is also used in some English based pidgins and creoles.

At the same time I change the possessive marker from se to 's, which is appended to the possessor. Therefore the possessive forms are hi's 'his or her; his or hers' and de's 'their; theirs'.