Pronouns: Little Words That Say a Lot | Otherwords

Pronouns may be little, but they say a lot, and they're always changing!

Otherwords is a PBS web series on Storied that digs deep into this quintessential human trait of language and fınds the fascinating, thought-provoking, and funny stories behind the words and sounds we take for granted. Incorporating the fıelds of biology, history, cultural studies, literature, and more, linguistics has something for everyone and offers a unique perspective into what it means to be human.

Host: Erica Brozovsky, Ph.D.
Creator/Director: Andrew Matthews & Katie Graham
Writer: Erica Brozovsky, Ph.D.
Producer: Katie Graham
Editor/Animation: Andrew Matthews
Executive Producer: Amanda Fox
Fact Checker: Yvonne McGreevy

Executive in Charge for PBS: Maribel Lopez
Associate Director of Programming for PBS: Niki Walker

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Otherwords is produced by Spotzen for PBS.
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[galvaton]

I love it when my boss says "we need to get this done" when of course they mean just me

[purcascade]

I'm a school librarian. I used to always say WE when talking about library happenings in emails or newsletters, like the library is a plural unit when it's really only me. "WE are cataloging this week." "WE are getting ready for inventory." "WE checked out 100 books today!" It was a conscious rhetorical manipulation to make the reader feel more engaged and involved with the library, but I started to feel like that was undervalueing the work I do, especially this year when 1:1 technology has taken over my entire job (especially especially since they still refuse to rehire my clerk position.) WE didn't check out 400 laptops in a month and troubleshoot 300 more. I DID THAT. Alone. With little to no help. I'm still working on breaking the habit, but I'm trying to show myself more respect.

[willsolacemahsaamini]

“—which Shakespeare took full advantage of.”
The humor is everything in videos with Erica lol 😂😂

[zippersocks]

As a Texan, “y’all” is itself a pronoun rather than a contraction of “you all”. Because sometimes we gotta say weird stuff like “all of y’all”.

Side note: some languages distinguish between inclusive and exclusive “we”. Pretty cool.

[karlkutac]

"Otherwords" has to be my favorite in the Storied series. I am always so excited when I see a new otherwords episode in my subscription. I know it's going to be very interesting, and this one did not disappoint. Great job!

[adityasriram]

Maybe it wasn't meant seriously, but I found three sentences with no pronouns
2:25 Of course, there was a fuss.
2:27 People are wary of change.
4:00 Gender aside, personal pronouns are an interesting bunch.

[uggeugge]

As a Dutch person I've always wondered why English doesn't have a formal version of "You". In Dutch we have 'jij' (informal), and 'U' (formal). 'U' is so similar to 'You', so it makes so much sense now! Also the fact that 'U' is even used as 'you' in English as well

[thelocalstumbler]

It's so interesting that "You" used to be more formal and had much better staying power than the informal thee and thou!

YOU most definitely are providing some quality learning content right now 👌

[DavidCruickshank]

"...must not be much of a history buff" could apply to so many instances of pedantic arguments over language. One example, people will claim that Electrocuted can only mean executed by electricity when it could mean only harmed by electricity way back in 1889, right around the time when the word was first coined.

I am learning English and I just found this channel. A huge treasure is in there. Also, It's a great video for those who are confused about gender language. I didn't realize what is 'they/them' for a single person until this video. Thank you so much.

[bunnyincloudrecesses]

I for sure lean on "we" when someone in my team at work made a mistake and I don't want to single them out. It really irks me when people use it negatively though. Like, "we have come to this conclusion" and I'm like, "no, mate, that is definitely not MY opinion."

[MirzaAhmed]

Easy. The only sentence you said that didn't have a pronoun was the one about Archibald and his mother.

[RiyanSyahSap]

In Indonesian language, we have two types of "we".
"Kita" means the locuteur and the interlocuteur.
"Kami" means the locuteur and another party other than the interlocuteur.
But the latter is mostly used in formal register so quite often we use "kita" for both contexts, even though it is not gramatically correct and may be ambigous.

[alitheia_]

As a swahili speaker I wonder what this fuss on pronouns are when we don't even have gender and pronouns baked into the language. Example She/he ate. Translates to alikula. Which implies just person ate. This means it possible to read a story without knowing the gender of the characters without an author explicitly revealing the details.

[shadowscribe]

When my older sister was in grade school, she was told it was wrong to use they when you didn't know and should defer to he. She felt that was stupid and refused to change.

[PhilGartman]

The example of we and they regarding sports teams is so spot on. I think about it every time I tweet about my teams. I try to say we as much as possible but sometimes I consciously say they to distance myself from a particularly bad performance. 😂

[quen_anito]

Gather round friends and listen. I bring knowledge of pronouns from my nation.

Tagalog has certain pronouns that most other languages don't. Apart from having 2nd person singular (ikaw, iyo) and plural (kayo, inyo), it also has two types of first person plural, inclusive 1st person plural (tayo, atin) and exclusive 1st person plural (kami, amin), indicating whether or not the person spoken to is part of the "us".

And while you may have heard that Tagalog doesn't have gendered pronouns, this wasn't always the case. I learned recently that there used to be gendered 3rd person singular pronouns*, but like how "you" came to be used for all 2nd person pronouns in English, gendered 3rd person singular pronouns were dropped and the gender neutral 3rd person singular pronouns (siya, kanya) came to be used for all 3rd person singular pronouns.

*I remember learning what they were, but my mind must've filed them as unimportant, cause I have no idea what they are right now

[Firegen]

Great video Dr. B. If in all the comment thread mud wrestling that's about to happen, noone else says it I will. It was concise; to the point and thoughtful. Your videos on Storied are some of my faves.

[ordinaryextraordinary]

pronouns? i mean yeah, i’d say i am. i don’t get why anyone would be antinouns considering how common they are

[Kairikey]

Y'all might be fussing over pronouns, but wait until you start to learn my language that the use of pronouns is so big that you have to juggle at least 5 version of "I" each day based on social context.