Today I was reading a language/linguistics community online*, and someone, referring to a person of unknown gender referred to “zir abilities” (rather than “his or her abilities”). I thought, “zir???”, and asked a similar question to the poster. Apparently, “zir”, along with “zie”, “zirs” and “zirself”, are one version of gender-neutral pronouns, pronouns invented by… someone… to allow us to not have to say stuff like “His or her head hurts” when the gender of the person is unknown (or unknowable?). As far as language is concerned, I am definitely in the descriptive linguistics camp (those that tend to use linguistics to DESCRIBE language as it changes, in whatever state it evolves to, as opposed to prescriptive linguists, who use linguistics to set rules for language to follow, and the language should not stray too much from these rules… of course, most people are a bit of both and the whole descriptive vs. prescriptive thing is a hot battle in linguistics that this post was not meant to get into…).

Anyway, even with my descriptive leanings, I don’t know if I like “zir”. It’s strange, and probably why nothing like that has caught on, though I guess it does solve a problem. A problem I don’t find myself having very much except when referring to little babies for the first time or with pets whose gender I don’t know yet. What do you think about this type of thing?
* (one of my interests is language/linguistics, although I do not personally speak anything but English fluently, if that. I do, however, enjoy the historical study of the way language, particularly English, has changed over the years, etc.)