. wiki.keithl.com/McWhorter
== John McWhorter books ==
 . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McWhorter 
  . b 1965, PhD Stanford 1993
  . taught linguistics at Cornell 1993-1995 and UC Berkeley 1995-2003
  . Manhattan Institute 2003-
  . Columbia University 2008-
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=== Pronoun Trouble . 2025 BvtLib 425.55 MCW . 216 pages ===
==== The Story of Us in Seven Little Words ====
 . I tried to read this book; if I was a language maven and had an "ear" for English as sound rather than printed words on a page, I would have learned far more from it.  
 . The overall message is that spoken languages evolve continuously, new words replace old, old words are modified, pronunciation changes
 . over time, pronouns change, grammar changes, older and younger and second-language speakers use different pronouns, and what we talk about changes
 . The book does NOT explicitly list "seven little words", but the core personal pronouns of English are '''"I, you, he, she, it we, they"''' ... (him, her, them
 .p6 [[ https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/agita | agita ]] a feeling of agitation or anxiety
 .p12 [[ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/amn%27t | amn't ]] "am not "in Scotland and Ireland 
 .p13 [[ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bowsy | bowsy ]] Obsolete spelling of boozy
 .p21 [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language | Proto Indo-European (PIE) language ]] 4500-2500 BC
 .p27 Twilight Zone [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Characters_in_Search_of_an_Exit | Five Characters in Search of an Exit ]]
 .p27 me versus I: "I ''(subject pronoun)'' did it" or "me" ''(object pronoun)'' if single word used alone
 .p36 Latin as model for the(snob) standardization of English
 .p45 [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_(linguistics) | linguistic agreement ]] a word changes form depending on the other words it relates to.
 .p48 Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian are mutually understandable dialects of same language
  . "language is a political definition, dialect is a linguistic definition"
 .p55 [[ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%BEe | Ye ]] is a misreading of "thorn" letter þ
  . [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Rest_Ye_Merry%2C_Gentlemen | God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen ]] Ye=You, or Thee
 .p56 English [[ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/inc | inc ]] meant "you two"
 .p57 [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_language | origin of language ]] hundreds of thousands to two million years ago
 .p57 [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Kondo | Marie Kondo ]] Japanese Organizing Consultant
 .p60 "status blind" use of [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_English | Middle English ]] pronouns was a grievous insult
  . Shakespeare signified the social status of characters by their pronouns; Othello uses "thou" for underling Iago, Iago uses "you" for boss Othello.  Quakers/Friends used "thou" for everyone in that sense.
 .p96 [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_(grammatical_number) | dual pronouns ]], two, between one and many
 ... and about here I ran out of energy and attention for this book.
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