Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

John McWhorter:

Pronouns have a way of changing, because all words generally do. But if a pronoun’s changing, you feel like somebody’s telling you to not use the middle finger on your right hand all day. And you’re trying not to, but it’s really hard.

Preet Bharara:

That’s John McWhorter. He’s a linguist, author, and professor at Columbia University, known for his sharp takes on language, race, and culture. McWhorter’s new book, Pronoun Trouble: The Story of Us in Seven Little Words hits shelves this week.

In our conversation, we explore the surprising history behind the words we use every day, why English is pronoun-starved, and how language is getting caught in the crossfire of today’s culture wars. That’s coming up. Stay tuned.

It has been 10 weeks since the second inauguration of Donald J. Trump. It’s been 10 weeks of political, and legal, and economic mayhem. It’s been 10 weeks of chaos, and incompetence, and crude retribution. The President is driving the country into a ditch, while treating the Constitution like roadkill. Opposition, organized and organic, is growing. The time for being on the back foot is over. Now is the time to fight for both the usual suspects and once unlikely allies materializing daily.

When even the Wall Street Journal editorial page calls the President’s trade war the dumbest in history, it’s time to fight. When even Andrew McCarthy, and Ann Coulter, and Joe Rogan call out the President’s unlawful deportations as horrific, it’s time to fight. When the markets are tanking, while measles is rising, it’s time to fight. When the President claims a right to a third term, and says, pointedly, “I’m not joking,” it’s time to fight.

So fight. Fight with whatever tools God gave you. If you’re a citizen, you can fight with your voice and fight with your vote, like people just did in Wisconsin. If you’re a journalist, you can fight with the truth, with or without a signal account, like Jeffrey Goldberg just did at the Atlantic. If you’re a senator, you can fight by speaking for 25 hours and five minutes without break, and inspire so many others to fight, like Cory Booker just did at the Capitol.

If you’re a lawyer and by definition an officer of the court, you can use your privileged status to fight for the rights of others, like so many are doing right now in courts around the country. And if you are a billion-dollar law firm, surely you can fight too. When I was at the Southern District of New York, I thought I would never be as proud of a workplace as I was of that office. I was wrong, because I’m just as proud today of the law firm where I’m a partner, WilmerHale. Maybe even more so, given the awesome challenges in doing the right thing when you are a business, rather than a public service enterprise.

As you may have heard, last week, WilmerHale became the victim of another unlawful, unconstitutional, and un-American executive order. It seeks to cripple our ability to represent clients for the principle sin of having once employed Robert Mueller, before and after he served as Special Counsel, though I’ll remind you, he was appointed by the Trump Justice Department.

Rather than accede to a patently illegal order, 16 hours later, WilmerHale went to court. The firm hired former solicitor, General Paul Clement, and he filed a powerful complaint on our behalf alleging violations of the First, and Fifth and Sixth Amendments. A few hours after that, Judge Leon largely granted our temporary restraining order and the fight is on. The fight is on also for two other law firms, Perkins Coie and Jenner & Block.

Not every law firm has chosen the same course. I’m not here today to criticize them. I’m only here to say, damn am I proud my firm chose to fight. And I hope more victims of disgusting and unlawful retribution by the President join the fight, as hard as that might be. So come on in, the water’s warm.

What does grammar reveal about who we are? John McWhorter joins me to talk about the evolution of language. Professor John McWhorter, welcome to the show.

John McWhorter:

Thank you for having me.

Preet Bharara:

So I congratulate you on this book, Pronoun Trouble, for those watching on YouTube, you can see it, The Story of Us in Seven Little Words. Can I ask you a preliminary question?

John McWhorter:

Of course.

Preet Bharara:

Why study language?

John McWhorter:

Because it is something that we think is just stringing words together, that is really so much more complicated, so much more elegant, and just so much more interesting than we have any reason to think it would be. That’s why I study it. Some people would say because it expresses the soul, et cetera, et cetera, I can pretend. But really, it’s just that it’s a fascinating system and we think we’re just putting words together.

Preet Bharara:

Were you fascinated by language when you were young?

John McWhorter:

Very. I have a twist. There’s something wrong with me. When I was four, I had never heard another language. I didn’t grow up in a neighborhood where there happened to be any Latinos. So I just thought you talked. I don’t think I even knew what English was. And then there was this Israeli girl and she started talking to her parents, and I was just blown away that this normal person who I knew could talk in a way where all of a sudden I couldn’t understand.

And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that most kids wouldn’t have cared about that. And why would they? They would just figure, I can’t understand her. There must be something other than English. But for me, I was jealous, I felt left out. I wanted to be able to do this second thing the way she could. And that really is the heart of why I like languages even now.

Preet Bharara:

So I did not grow up to become a linguist. And I did have a second language in the home. Actually, a couple of other languages in the home. We’re immigrants from India.

John McWhorter:

Which were the languages?

Preet Bharara:

Hindi and Punjabi.

John McWhorter:

Mm-hmm.

Preet Bharara:

But I remember being a kid, immigrant kid in school, and I used to enjoy doing something that I don’t think kids today do, which is diagramming sentences. Did you diagram sentences when you were in school?

John McWhorter:

No, because I was a Montessori kid-

Preet Bharara:

Oh, no.

John McWhorter:

… where you have to learn a whole lot by osmosis. And frankly, it works for some kids and not others, but it did for me, because I was a little nerd. But that meant that we learned the parts of speech, but the diagramming is something I only heard about later. I would’ve loved it. But, no.

Preet Bharara:

I think you would have. I don’t think they do the diagramming now. But you learned the parts of speech. Do you think that we need more language education as a percentage of what people who are young in grade school are doing? The amount that we have now or less?

John McWhorter:

Oh, there really needs to be more. There really, if we could just blow it all up and start again. Linguistics shouldn’t be something that you optionally learn about in college. Linguistic concepts, maybe not called that, should be taught as early as fifth grade, and maybe some of the space that is taken up by, or used to be taken up by learning vocabulary words, I remember language arts and learning what arrogate meant, et cetera, I would think that, actually, if we had to make space for something and leave something out, basic linguistics ideas should be taught. Because, otherwise, what we have is an awful lot of unintentional linguistic discrimination, an awful lot of people who, for example, grow up like you and don’t realize how cool Hindi and Punjabi are compared to English. They just think, oh, it’s something-

Preet Bharara:

I didn’t think they were.

John McWhorter:

No, it’s just what you hear in the house. Whereas, to me, I think, how do you put sentences together like that? We need more of that in school. It’s not going to happen. It’s not a priority of mine. But linguistics should be taught earlier.

Preet Bharara:

Have you found that the quality of writing has stayed the same among college students over the years or diminished?

John McWhorter:

I haven’t noticed any difference. But then, the truth is I’ve had a rather unusual trajectory. My first school where I taught was Cornell, where students are unusually well-prepared. Then at UC Berkeley, there were many students who could write on that level, many students who frankly could barely construct a grammatical sentence at all, and then everybody in the middle. Then, I’m now at Columbia where everybody can write well. No matter what your background is, I have never experienced a student at Columbia who wasn’t extremely deft at rubbing a noun and a verb together. So maybe I need to have had a wider representation?

Preet Bharara:

I guess. So you’re very lucky that you get so much clear writing. Okay, so now, one of the parts of speech, which is the focus of your book is pronouns. Am I correct, it’s the part of speech that has the fewest members?

John McWhorter:

Well, in our language, definitely, because we’re pronoun poor. Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

We’re pronoun poor. What does it mean to be… First of all, do you want to describe for anyone who may not actually know, what a pronoun is?

John McWhorter:

Pronouns stand in for nouns. And so, my car is broken. And then you don’t keep on saying car, car. “So I took the car in, and they said that the car was broken, and I have to pay money for the car.” You talk about it after that. “It’s missing its carburetor,” or something like that. Or, “My sister is getting married. My sister is so happy that my sister invite…” No. “My sister is getting married. She’s so happy that she invited…”

And so, “My sister is getting married. She’s so happy that she invited,” et cetera. And so, that means that we have these little words that stand in for whatever noun it is that we specified at first. That’s a pronoun.

Preet Bharara:

And every language has pronouns. Correct?

John McWhorter:

There is no language that doesn’t have any.

Preet Bharara:

Because there’s no language in which we kill people by saying the same noun again, and again, and again.

John McWhorter:

Right. Nobody would have time. And so, no, there’s no language where there is no way to say it.

Preet Bharara:

So you divide up pronouns as to singular and plural. Right?

John McWhorter:

Mm-hmm.

Preet Bharara:

So I is the singular, we is the plural. He, or she, or it-

John McWhorter:

It, are the singular.

Preet Bharara:

… is the singular. And they is the plural.

John McWhorter:

Exactly.

Preet Bharara:

Also by person, first person meaning I, you meaning the other person, and the third person.

John McWhorter:

Mm-hmm.

Preet Bharara:

Is that the way that pronouns are divided up in all languages?

John McWhorter:

No. For one thing, in a lot of languages, not only do you have the singular and the plural, but you also have the dual. And so you want to be very precise. If you want to just say you two, there’ll be a word for that. Or we two, as opposed to me and three other people.

There are languages where you have to specify the gender, not only with he and she, but with the word for you. And often with the word for I. You can take it all so much further than in English, where all we’ve basically got is I, you, he, she, it, we, and they. It’s kind of not enough and it trips us up sometimes.

Preet Bharara:

We’re going to get into that. Is there a word… I have to do this, sir? Is there a word for we few? We happy few?

John McWhorter:

There’s no single word that I’m aware of. Be nice.

Preet Bharara:

Otherwise, Shakespeare would’ve used that.

John McWhorter:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Instead of we happy few.

John McWhorter:

Although, if Shakespeare had lived a little earlier, he would’ve known a word like yeet, which meant you two. And you had thou, that’s one you, and then you is y’all, and then yeet is you two. That was gone by the time he was around, but it had only been gone for about 300 years.

Preet Bharara:

So when you say we’re pronoun poor, we don’t distinguish among various kinds of designations, right? So we say you, we don’t know if that means one person, if it means 20 people, if it means two people, we just don’t know. In other languages, we also don’t have a respectful you and a casual you like we have in Spanish, which is one of the languages that I learned-

John McWhorter:

Exactly.

Preet Bharara:

… growing up. Does that say something about the cultures in which English is spoken? Is there a reason why we became pronoun impoverished? And does it matter?

John McWhorter:

The truth is it really isn’t what we want it to be. I would love to be able to say the reason that we’re so pronoun poor is that there’s something about being an English speaking person, probably somewhere around 1500, here’s how the culture matches how the language changed.

But the truth is, it’s a fascinating mystery. It’s something that happens to Standard English much more than to the rural Englishes that nobody hears. There’s still people in rural England who use thou. It’s usually tha, but there’s still using it. But in the cities, it disappeared, and there wasn’t really anything going on in English cities that wasn’t going on in Russian cities, French cities, Swedish cities. And yet English is a language that kind of likes to take it light. And the reasons for it start with the fact that Vikings beat it up starting in 787 A.D.

And then, basically, a sense developed in this language that you don’t want to use more detail than you need. Exactly why that happened has never been discovered. But it’s very clear in how English just kind of becomes this linguistic stripper, starting in early Middle English. And still is in many ways. And it means that for some reason English loses its pronouns. There’s just this general trend toward lightness. Whereas, in other languages, the normal number of pronouns was kept to a much larger extent, and new ones developed, but not in English.

Preet Bharara:

I was always told, but now you’ll confirm it because you’re the expert, that English was a very rich language, in the sense that there were more unique words in English than in either any other language or most other languages. Is that true or false?

John McWhorter:

Yeah, that is an idea that comes from the fact that we have brought in words, especially from French and Latin, so that you get sandwiches, like you can say help, that’s an original English word. You can say aid, that’s French. You can say assist, and that’s Latin. And those three things have slightly different meanings. And then help out means something different altogether.

And so they are all of these ways of saying help, because we’ve borrowed all these words. Now the problem with it is, it’s like we can say, I keep on bursting bubbles here. But we can say English has got the bigger vocabulary, but it’s never necessarily been proven that there is no way in, I’m going to take Russian randomly, in Russian, that you can’t convey the difference between help, and aid, and assist.

In old English, there were ways of conveying differences like that, where these foreign words came in and replaced the old ones. But it’s not that it gave us new ways of doing things. So it’s very hard to say. English has a massive vocabulary, partly because we can preserve our language in a large book called a dictionary. Whereas, in a language spoken in the rainforest, whatever words go out of use just become forgotten in a couple of generations. We have words that we don’t use, like ruth. Ruthless, we know what ruthless means. Well, there’s technically a word ruth. There isn’t, but it’s in the dictionary, so…

Preet Bharara:

It’s whatever without Ruth.

John McWhorter:

Right, it’s a mercy. But who’s ever said, “Please show me Ruth”?

Preet Bharara:

Right, well…

John McWhorter:

Unless you’re trying-

Preet Bharara:

Unless it was a person that-

John McWhorter:

Right. Your aunt. Right.

Preet Bharara:

Or the babe.

John McWhorter:

Right.

Preet Bharara:

The reason I ask the question is we seem to be vocabulary rich at the same time we are pronoun poor. And I just wondered if there was a theory about that?

John McWhorter:

There isn’t. The pronouns are used very heavily, and we are not interested in having a proliferation of them, the way many languages do.

Preet Bharara:

So the pronoun issue is one thing. I find myself telling people from time to time, we talked about my Indian heritage, here’s a category of word that’s not pronoun, but is the terms that we use for our relatives. So in English, there is uncle and there is aunt. In India, let me tell you, and maybe this is true in many societies, there is a word for uncle on your mother’s side, uncle on your father’s side, older uncle on your father’s side, younger uncle on your father’s side, older sister on your… On, and on, and on, and on. You say, in-law. Someone’s my brother-in-law in America, and in English speaking countries you have to ask, “Well, is that your wife’s brother? Or is that your sister’s husband?”

Do you have a theory about that? Why in certain cultures the specificity of the relation is so important that there’s a separate word for it, and we don’t have that in English?

John McWhorter:

I’d have to fly by the seat of my pants, but it’s definitely true that-

Preet Bharara:

Did I stump the professor?

John McWhorter:

Pretty much. You’re correct. Western Europe is very light on words for family members, for the most part. It feels so normal to us to just say uncle, aunt. But as soon as you step beyond Western Europe, even in Eastern Europe, even in the Slavic languages, you have to be more specific. And the further east you go from there, so for example, the Indian languages are a great example, but Chinese is the same way. The Southeast Asian language is the same way.

And then as you move down into Australia, if you think about Native American languages, it’s normal to have a different word for different in-laws of different sexes, et cetera. Western Europe doesn’t do it. And my guess is that it has something to do with the development of bourgeois societies and capitalism there, where there’s somewhat less of a focus on just the family, as opposed to the larger community. Because capitalism creates that artificial way of thinking, because there must be a reason why Western Europe just says cousin, whereas that would be unthinkable.

And I’m going to, seat in my pants, that’s probably not true of most of the world’s languages. It’s a Western European thing to be that blank about family names, in relations.

Preet Bharara:

Can we make a normative judgment about that? Or is it just descriptive?

John McWhorter:

I just describe it, but I’m sure that many people would say that it suggests a lack of warm family feeling, et cetera.

Preet Bharara:

I’ll be right back with John McWhorter after this.

So we have some foundation on pronouns. Your book is called Pronoun Trouble. Can we get into the controversies relating to pronouns now, sir?

John McWhorter:

Mm-hmm.

Preet Bharara:

Why do we have controversies about pronouns? Why is this not a simple thing? And what are those controversies that you sometimes weighed into?

John McWhorter:

Well, we don’t like change for one thing. And pronouns have a way of changing, because all words generally do. But if a pronoun’s changing, you feel like somebody’s playing with your fingers. So it’s not like just change in fashion with clothes. If somebody’s playing with your fingers, where they’re telling you to not use the middle finger on your right hand all day. And you’re trying not to, but it’s really hard.

And so there are all sorts of controversies. I mean, for this book, I think everybody knows that one of the ones that I cover is going to be the one about the new usage of they. But really, on the other hand, there were people who didn’t like it when you started being used in the singular and thou fell away, in Standard English.

And even now we are told that it’s wrong to say, “Billy and me went to the store.” When really, that was a change that happened in English starting about 400 years ago, for reasons that are about what English is like. And yet, because around that time, a certain group of people told us that English was supposed to have grammar like Latin’s, we think there’s something wrong with, “Billy and me went to the store,” because in Latin you would put it as, “Billy and I went to the store.” And we don’t think about the fact that in French, you have to say, “Billy and me went to the store.” And nobody there has any problem.

Preet Bharara:

But professor, you teach at a school of higher learning.

John McWhorter:

I try.

Preet Bharara:

And presumably you grade papers, we talked about that a minute ago.

John McWhorter:

I do.

Preet Bharara:

If you’re in fourth grade and you write, “Billy and me are going to the store,” should you be marked off for that or not?

John McWhorter:

You have to be, because what the fourth grader needs to know is that there’s something that we do in formal situations just because we do. Kind of like you wear a top hat in a certain era, or whatever jacket people are wearing now. But it’s not because it makes no sense to say, “Billy and me went to the store.” That’s the way I would teach it, that there’s certain formalities that you have to observe, you have to put on deodorant, but understand that the way that you want to say it, or the way you want to write it is not wrong, it’s just not appropriate for certain situations.

Preet Bharara:

But then later you can take license.

John McWhorter:

Mm-hmm.

Preet Bharara:

So when you write your short story, when you’re in college, you can say, “Billy and me.”

John McWhorter:

Yeah, because that’s what your character would actually say. Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

But your narrator can say that too?

John McWhorter:

Probably, if the narrator is implied to be that kind of character. Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Let’s talk about it. So I went to a small private school in New Jersey, that I’ve given to and I support. I got a great education there, but there were some shortcomings. One of the shortcomings was not instruction in English. And we had a very proud headmaster, who founded the school. His name was Russell G. Ranney. He would personally come… He wore a top hat, by the way, from time to time.

John McWhorter:

I’m picturing this.

Preet Bharara:

And curled mustachio, kind of a throwback. But he really believed in the importance of language instruction. He would boast that we had twice as much language instruction, English instruction, in grade school and in middle school, then called junior high, than the local public schools did, with a heavy, heavy emphasis on grammar. So it was pound… And he was not a super liberal gentleman, other than with his mustachio.

John McWhorter:

Was he a round person or was he a slim person?

Preet Bharara:

Slender, tall. You kind of imagine him with a cane, although I don’t think he had a cane.

John McWhorter:

Was he married to anyone?

Preet Bharara:

Yes. Yes.

John McWhorter:

Okay.

Preet Bharara:

Betsy. Betsy Rani.

John McWhorter:

That’s just right.

Preet Bharara:

He also had, I don’t know why I’m telling all these stories, and it’s not a big school. He drove, I think it was a lavender Mercedes onto the campus. We had a uniform, which was not uncommon in the ’70s and the ’80s. We also had a requirement to take ballroom dancing. So I’m giving you a sense of my growing up-

John McWhorter:

Did Russell and Betsy have any progeny?

Preet Bharara:

Yes. Yes, they did. Yes, they did.

John McWhorter:

And it wasn’t just that car? Okay.

Preet Bharara:

It wasn’t just that car. God bless them. But one of the things that I still remember him yelling, thunderously, because he was a really big guy, really large man, and he would sometimes come into the seventh grade class and personally teach us grammar. And I will never get out of my head, even though it’s 45 years ago, that you must, must, must use the singular pronoun when you say things like, “The professor assigned the reading that he thinks is best for you.” You don’t say he or she, you don’t say they, you don’t say she, even when it’s not known and you’re talking about a generic professor. And that was drummed into us with the fear of God.

Was that right, wrong, or was it right or wrong then? Is it different now? How has that evolved? And how do you think about the lessons of Russell G. Ranney?

John McWhorter:

Mr. Ranney was wrong. And I can completely understand what a theatrical thrill that person was. I knew somebody like that too, around the same time.

Preet Bharara:

He was a larger than life figure. Yes.

John McWhorter:

And the authority that he would’ve conveyed. Practically, the rolled Rs, and always a certain air of intellectual menace. I get it. But he was wrong. There have been people using what’s called singular they, who were considered excellent users of the English language, really, since Chaucer. And if Defoe, and Austin, and Shakespeare, and Thackeray can use it, if Thackeray can say, “A person can’t help their birth,” if that’s in Vanity Fair, what would Mr. Ranney have said about that?

And if he really thought that it was a mistake for Thackeray to write in Vanity Fair, “A person can’t help their birth,” well, then frankly, the question is, who was he to say it was a mistake, if for hundreds and hundreds of years speakers of the language were using it that way?

Preet Bharara:

Is that more like Billy and me in fourth grade, versus when you become an esteemed writer?

John McWhorter:

Well, the truth is that with Billy and me, I know from experience, if you say, “Billy and me went to the store,” in a formal setting, a formal media setting, you’re going to hear about it. Whereas, if you say, “A person can’t help their birth,” nobody is going to write in. Or if they do, it’s probably Russell Ranney’s daughter or something. It’s not going to be the usual person, because it’s just English as it’s spoken.

Preet Bharara:

But the more common mistake that educated, and dare I say erudite, people make is not Billy and me went to the store, they’ll say, “Please join Billy and I when we go to the store,” because they have been taught, or they think they’ve been taught that me is always incorrect and that I is more formal. Is that other formulation, join Billy and I, can we be disapproving of that?

John McWhorter:

Really, the whole between you and I thing, and even Obama uses it often, with, “Michelle and I…” Somebody sent a letter to Michelle and I, he’ll say that.

Preet Bharara:

I would just tell you that it drives me crazy.

John McWhorter:

I can imagine, because of the way you were taught. Really, I can imagine.

Preet Bharara:

Because of my tortured youth.

John McWhorter:

Part of me being a Montessori kid is that nobody taught that stuff. And so I missed developing any kind of feeling about it, and then only learned later that you’re supposed to use these locutions.

Preet Bharara:

Did that better qualify you to become a linguistics professor, neutral, or less qualify you?

John McWhorter:

Better, to be honest.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, okay.

John McWhorter:

Because it really means I didn’t grow up with the blackboard grammar. But the thing is, between you and I, I have pity because-

Preet Bharara:

We may have to end the interview, sir.

John McWhorter:

Because the truth is that the Billy and I rule is so unnatural. We use me as the subject in so many contexts. So for example, “Who broke that lamp?” “Me.” Well, you would never say, “Me broke it.” Just, there’s so many places in the language where you use me as a subject, that a person taught this Billy and I rule just thinks, okay, you have to use I after and, and that means between you and I. I see that in some of the most formal contexts. I’ve heard it on National Public Radio. It’s an un-learnable rule, frankly. And that’s why people say between you and I.

Preet Bharara:

Just to rescue the situation from my old school, there was a classmate of mine who was roundly made fun of even though we had this indoctrination from Mr. Ranney, because when she would knock on the door-

John McWhorter:

Oh, God.

Preet Bharara:

… and someone said, “Who is it?”

John McWhorter:

It’s Hyacinth.

Preet Bharara:

She would say, “It is I.”

John McWhorter:

Right.

Preet Bharara:

So the rest of us, even with that indoctrination, thought that that was a bridge too far.

John McWhorter:

Yes. And it’s one of those things where if that is a bridge too far, and it’s funny, way back, the people who were saying that we should use I and me as subject and object, the grand old idea, they would say, “It is I is an exception because in Old English you would even say it is me.” And there’s a reason why you would say it in Old English. But yeah, that person who said, “It is I,” I’ll bet they didn’t date much. And that’s because the rule doesn’t make any sense.

Preet Bharara:

I don’t know how you made that leap, sir. I will leave that one aside. So there’s another meaning of they in modern times that you have opined on and have a suggestion for. And that is not when you are trying to be un-gendered, as between a male teacher, a female teacher, or some other reason, but when you’re referring to someone who is non-binary. And you have expressed the legitimate feeling of confusion as a reading matter about, well who are we talking about when you’re talking about they? Could you explain what that issue is and what your modest proposal is?

John McWhorter:

Well, we have no real choice but to use they as the non-binary pronoun. You can’t just make up a pronoun. They’re too deeply seated. So we have to use something we have. And I, we, you would not make any sense. You can’t use it, that’s not the way English works. And so it has to be they.

But it can be confusing. And it can be confusing in casual speech. I would say it’s more confusing, often, in writing. And I’ve noticed some enlightened and progressive writings over the past few years, using the new they, where you keep getting tripped up. And this is even with some of the best copy editors on earth.

And I thought one thing that would make it easier is if, when we’re using non-binary they, we just capitalize the T, because then you can just know immediately that it’s the new they, as opposed to they, several people. And it would just make the reading experience smoother.

Now, it wouldn’t work at the beginning of a sentence, but then again, we could consider it part of good editing to make sure it doesn’t wind up at the beginning of a sentence in places like that, that become a very Strunk & White-ish thing. But I think that would just make all of the transition easier.

Preet Bharara:

So I’m going to come back to Strunk & White. I don’t know if you took their name in vain or not.

John McWhorter:

I did.

Preet Bharara:

Because that was an assigned bible when I was young.

John McWhorter:

Ranney would’ve loved that. Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

But when I first read your proposal about capitalizing they, I’m like, well, that’s silly. And then I saw you being asked that question the other day, and you had a really good rejoinder. I never thought of it. Well, why the hell do we capitalize I?

John McWhorter:

Mm-hmm.

Preet Bharara:

We don’t capitalize he, she, it, they, them.

John McWhorter:

No.

Preet Bharara:

Why do we capitalize I?

John McWhorter:

For some antique reason, as in, it to be that print either didn’t exist or it was rare. And so everything is handwritten by some monk. And I was one little scratch, if you think about it. There was no dot yet, so it’s just a scratch. But then, M was three scratches, not hooked together yet. N was two scratches, not hooked together yet.

So if somebody’s writing, even if they’re pretty good at it, it was easy to think that just the I might be connected to some M, or N, or U around it, which was just two scratches. And so what you needed was a way for I to stand out, because pronouns are used so often. It’s smoother if you don’t get stuck on the I.

And so you could either put a dot on it, that’s why there’s a dot for the lower case. Or you could capitalize it, and that’s why that happened. Both of those things settled in, and we don’t really think about it anymore. Why is there a dot on the I, for example? You don’t really need it.

Preet Bharara:

Don’t know. I don’t know.

John McWhorter:

Because that was easier when you were writing it with your toes.

Preet Bharara:

Why is there a cross on the T?

John McWhorter:

Actual-

Preet Bharara:

Because you have to dot your I’s and cross your T’s, because of expression.

John McWhorter:

I like that version of causation. But yeah, so that is why the capital T would work, because we’re used to the arbitrariness of capital I. We could do more.

Preet Bharara:

So there are other phrases that cause controversy, about gender, and about, I guess it’s an argument of fairness, among other things. So help us grapple with the following. I’m in a mixed group of folks, men and women, and I say, “You guys.” Okay or not okay in your book?

John McWhorter:

Well, you know, if I am addressing those women, I say, “Folks.” That’s my thing.

Preet Bharara:

I say folks all the time too.

John McWhorter:

Do you do folks too? Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

I do. But I didn’t do that intentionally because I was worried about guys. I don’t know, I think I just happened to start using folks.

John McWhorter:

I started using folks because, call it 25 years ago, I approached a group of people who were females, and I said, “Ladies, I was hoping that we could,” something, something. They were teaching assistants of mine. And one of them very politely said, “Ladies isn’t great.” And I said, “Oh, okay, I get what you mean. I’ll come up with something else.” And so then I started using folks, because people is a little pushy. But among themselves, those same women, I’m sure, and this was probably 1996, were saying, “You guys.”

And what they meant by it was not you people with penises. What they meant was y’all. And the guys no longer has a male connotation, when the women use it. Just like when they say dude to each other, they don’t mean person who shaves, look over there at that interesting thing.

Preet Bharara:

I say dude a lot. It’s a product of being, I think, Gen X, growing up in the ’90s. And I say it to all different kinds of people, and it has been objected to when I have used it with, for example, my wife and others. Proper objection? Or does language change? And can it encompass something beyond a mere gendered reference?

John McWhorter:

It’s funny, dude might have a very sophisticated slot of meaning. It might be something that women can use among one another to mean, “Hey, vernacularly affectionate other person.” But if a man says it, then, “Hey dude, you can’t…” To be honest, I’d like it if men could use it, because I’m thinking of it as a gender-neutral word. But if women don’t like it, then yeah, that’s interesting. I don’t use dude because I wear cardigan sweaters. But I can imagine if I did, it would be-

Preet Bharara:

That’s interesting causation too.

John McWhorter:

Yeah. It would be tricky if women did not prefer it. And I’m guessing that many women would not want to hear that from you or me. That’s true.

Preet Bharara:

When one quotes from someone in history, and the quote is full of gendered language, so for example, Robert Kennedy, “Whenever a man strikes out,” et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, is that properly objected to? Should it be modified when quoted from in 2025? How do you feel about that issue?

John McWhorter:

Well, when I’m presenting something like that to students, or quoting something in a book, I always say beforehand, it’s almost trigger warning, but it’s not that dire, I just say, “Of course, today we would say human,” or “Of course, today we would not say miss, or something like that, but this is what the person said.” I think that’s enough. I wouldn’t substitute what they said, as if what they said was some kind of vicious slur.

But for example, in lots of older things, somebody will say something about miss, and it sounds so denigrating to us now. And I’ll say before it, “This person’s use of miss is infelicitous to us now, but I think the meaning is clear and still applicable today. And put on your history glasses.” And that’ll do. Because the further we get from earlier texts, the more of that kind of thing there’s going to be. And I think we need to understand. And that also goes for word Negro, and also the word that’s even more awkward. I think we need to make sure that people understand that there are history glasses that we can put on. But yeah, I’d say something beforehand, but I wouldn’t change the text itself.

Preet Bharara:

How appropriate is usage of the term that you’ve already mentioned, y’all, if you are like me from the north? Is there a rule in favor or rule against? Is it trying too hard if I, Preet Bharara, from New York and New Jersey begin to say y’all?

John McWhorter:

No, actually, because y’all is spreading. Y’all starts as Southern/Black, but it’s becoming a way for anybody, anywhere in America, to refer to more than one person in what’s intended as a warm and colloquial way. I think that’s a good thing, because we… It’s never going to get to the point that the Wall Street Journal uses y’all, but we have needed a plural you for centuries now. And so even if it’s just used in the vulgate, as one says, that’s a step in the right direction.

Preet Bharara:

You point out in the book something that’s very adorable. He was surprised, really? Adorable in a book about pronouns?

John McWhorter:

What was cute in it?

Preet Bharara:

Well, it was my experience with my daughter, and I thought that it was unique to her, and I’ve been telling this story for years and apparently it’s not unique to her. And that is, when you’re an infant and learning language, you think that your name is you because your parents are constantly saying you. And so you think that it’s-

John McWhorter:

“Let me pick you up.” Right. Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Let me pick you up. And so when your infant child says, “You hungry,” you’re like, “No, I’m fine. Thank you. I don’t need a sandwich,” they’re not saying you, they’re saying I.

John McWhorter:

Exactly.

Preet Bharara:

Anyway, I have no question there. That was just an interesting revelation.

John McWhorter:

That is cute, isn’t it? Yeah, my daughter would say, “Carry you?” And that meant pick me up. Right.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, carry, right. So the issue of pronouns and asserting your pronouns, which has been something that people have done in recent years, do you have a view on that? Or not?

John McWhorter:

It’s become a marker of a certain progressive sense on how biological sex and gender identification are different. And I figure, if people want to doff their cap to that, it’s the same statement as me wearing a cardigan and therefore signaling that I’m kind of a writerly person, which is definitely what I’m trying to do. Although, I really like wearing cardigans. And I think that that’s just going to settle in.

And I don’t do it. I don’t feel like telling somebody that I’m he/him. It seems rather obvious. But especially for a lot of younger people, that’s what they’re going to do. I wouldn’t want to see it coerced. And actually, in the book I say, “Are we sure that you need to specify the object form him?” Like I am he, him, his. Who would be he, her, theirs? You don’t need to specify that part. So he/they, okay. But if it’s just she, why not just she? And maybe I’ll catch some flack for that, but I just thought I’d suggest you could abbreviate it.

Preet Bharara:

Do you have any view on, I don’t want to presage the answer or my view by using the word, but normative in this, but policing of language, and arguments about, quote unquote, whatever that means, “policing of language”, rules for words to use, not to use in bureaucracies and companies, et cetera, largely critiqued by the right for reasons that are, I think, obvious? But also, we’ve had George Packer of the Atlantic on who critiques it from the left, with a very interesting argument that, among other things, if you sugarcoat or make mild the sufferings of people, you’re less likely to have people, other folks… There I’m using folks. You’re less likely to have other folks understand their plight. And so you’re not doing anyone a favor, you’re not doing anyone a service by trying to use duller words than are perhaps required by the occasion. Do you have a view on that from either direction?

John McWhorter:

Well, you put it perfectly. And the truth is, it’s a matter of degree. There’s nothing wrong with that we now say flight attendant instead of stewardess. There’s nothing wrong with chairperson. There’s nothing wrong if people who used to be called Oriental would prefer Asian. Something that comes up now and then is the way it used to be.

The idea lately, that you have this whole flood of terms that you’re supposed to be using, and you’re taught that you’re behind the curve if you’re not. And that came first, most notoriously, from the left around 2020. Now we’re seeing this ridiculous list that’s come from the Trump administration from the right. Frankly, it never works. If you’ve got too many words at a time, then people just don’t have time to attend to them. If you’re making up that many, then chances are you’re coming from some rather extreme, choosy, punitive ideology that is going to basically put off most people.

And the general truth is that if you’re creating political change, word lists have only very recently been thought of as an important way of doing it. It used to be that grassroots activism was considered hard. You have to knock on doors, you have to wear your voice out. But that’s what people who made a difference did. The idea that you’re going to do it by putting out word lists is something that social media makes seem attractive and that a certain kind of charisma and hope makes seem useful. But it’s really, frankly, kind of a lazy politics. It’s not about word lists and telling people don’t say things. It’s supposed to be about changing thought. And that only works so well when you just try to change what words people use.

Preet Bharara:

Going back to my, I’m reliving some of my younger self today, we were taught a phrase, I don’t know if people are still taught this, and it was ostensibly meant to make us feel better about schoolyard bullies and the type of folks who would make fun of you, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” True or false?

John McWhorter:

True. And the new idea that when someone calls you a name, they are destroying your soul and have therefore committed what we call violence or trauma, that’s rather new. And things that are rather new sometimes can be valuable, new insights. But in this case, I think it’s a little indulgent, and a little hasty, and a little unhealthy, because I think we’re beginning to forget, in many quarters, how resilient human beings are, of all colors, of all stations in life.

And yeah, names will never hurt me. Now, a name thrown at you directly in your face continuously for hours on end, we can think about that. But if somebody just says that, “Ah,” and you collapse, and you act as if somebody speared you in the back, no, it’s an act, I think.

Preet Bharara:

No, you just have to beat those people in life.

John McWhorter:

Mm-hmm. That helps.

Preet Bharara:

Which is my mantra. So one more story from when I was a kid. So my name is Preet Bharara, that’s what I go by. But Preet is not my full proper legal name. My full proper legal name is Preetinder, which not everyone knows. I don’t use it, for obvious reasons. I’m proud of my name-

John McWhorter:

It’s in the… Yeah, right, but…

Preet Bharara:

And my middle name is Singh. So imagine you’re seven in suburban New Jersey in 1976, and your name is, literally, it sounds like Pretender Sing Bharara.

John McWhorter:

It’s not worth the trouble. Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

And I know my dad’s listening, I’m very proud of my heritage and my name, but Preet is much better. And there was a guy in my high school, I think I was a freshman, he was a sophomore. He was kind of a bully was picking on me. But the way he picked on me was to call me Preetinder, and I would object. And he would say, “Well, that’s your name.” And he would go around very ostentatiously, when he was picking on me, saying, “Preetinder this, Preetinder that, Preetinder,” etc, etc, etc. And his legal justification, I guess, was, “Well, that’s your freaking name. I can call you that if I want.” Who is in the right?

John McWhorter:

He’s clearly a bully. He knows what he’s doing. He’s getting people laughing at you. And if I had been in your situation, I would’ve come up with something to call him over and over again to the point that he would probably knock it off. I remember, it’s slightly similar situation-

Preet Bharara:

His name was David. It was very hard for an Indian kid to get over on a guy named David.

John McWhorter:

Oh, no, you have to make something up that’s kind of stupid. “Yes, my name is Preetinder, but your name is bastard.” And every time he says Preetinder, you just say, “Okay, bastard.”

Preet Bharara:

I haven’t followed up on him, but I hope and believe that I beat him in life. That’s what I did.

John McWhorter:

I know what you mean. That sequence of sounds has a meaning in the Indo-Aryan languages, and it just ends up happening to sound unusual in English. And then you’re just kind of stuck with it. Yeah, no, that kid, he was a bully. He needed to be bullied back.

Preet Bharara:

Last moment before we go, a lot of controversy and discussion around all sides with respect to what is popularly known as DEI, which takes some definition depending on what institution you’re talking about and what programs you’re talking about. What’s your view of that phrase and that movement?

John McWhorter:

DEI takes those three words, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and uses them in ways much more specific than what the number one dictionary definitions would be. So a rhetorical strategy is to say, “Are you against diversity, equity, and inclusion?” And of course, who is? But the question is, especially-

Preet Bharara:

Well, some people are.

John McWhorter:

Well, some, but most people, including people on the hard right, are not against equity, inclusion, and diversity. They’re against what those three words mean in the mouths or the writings of certain people. And I frankly think that DEI, and its ideology, got pushed way too hard after March of 2020, and that there’s some excesses that do need to be pruned. But the way the Trump administration is doing it is ham-fisted, punitive, and mean. And so, unfortunately, we have traded one evil for another, and we’re just going to have to wait to see how it plays out.

Preet Bharara:

Professor John McWhorter, the book is Pronoun Trouble: The Story of Us in Seven Little Words. Thanks for being with us. I really appreciate it.

John McWhorter:

Thanks for having me, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

Stay tuned. After the break, I’ve invited a special guest to reflect on what the American democratic system might learn from its parliamentary peers around the world.

To end the show this week, I want to take a deeper look at a topic several listeners have asked about. In my interview with Corey Brettschneider released on March 10th, we touched on an important but often overlooked point. Democracy isn’t a one-size-fits-all system. The US operates under a two-party presidential system, but is that really the best model for governing? To help answer that question, we turn to Max Stearns, a constitutional lawyer, an author of Parliamentary America: The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing Our Broken Democracy.

Max Stearns:

Our Constitution is uniquely long in its endurance. And a lot of us have grown up, like we went to school learning, the fact that our system has lived longer than others must mean that it’s the product of unique wisdom or insight. That’s a mistake. And the truth of the matter is that our system of two-party presidentialism has been replicated nowhere in the world. In fact, although we’ve exported democracy around the globe, we’ve never even sought to export our system of democracy.

Preet Bharara:

The stats seem to bear that out. Historically, presidential democracies have a higher failure rate. They revert to dictatorships nearly twice as often as parliamentary systems. Before we explore why that is, let’s start with the basics. What exactly is a two-party presidential system?

Max Stearns:

Presidential systems typically mean that the voters directly or indirectly through an electoral college are choosing the head of the government who we call the president.

Preet Bharara:

But the Founding Fathers didn’t design our government around a two-party system. In fact, the Constitution doesn’t mention political parties at all. As Stearns explains, the three branches of government were meant to function similarly to a popular game.

Max Stearns:

So The Framers had this intuition that I liken to a game of rock paper scissors, although a little bit more elaborate, where they set up three branches of government, and they envisioned these as co-equal branches of government, that could, at various times, either defeat the other branches or be defeated by the other branch. And there’s a set of mechanisms that we call checks and balances, that are the means by which each branch avoids encroachment by the other branches on its institutional prerogatives.

And so what The Framers really thought they had constructed was a game, in which those who were within each of these three institutions would jealously safeguard the privileges or prerogatives of those institutions against encroachments by the others.

Preet Bharara:

Yet according to Stearns, our government has never worked as designed.

Max Stearns:

What we’ve ended up with is a two-party system. And as a consequence of the two-party system in which the president is really the head of one of those two parties, that has meant that the rival jealousies have tended to be dominated by party rivalries, more so than institutional rivalries, especially at the level of the political branches of government, meaning the presidency and Congress.

In other words, if the president is aligned with those that are controlling the Congress, they will collude, in a sense, that they will regard their interests very often as aligned against the interests of those that are on the out party. And it’s problematic because the votes tend to fall very strictly, if not absolutely, along party lines, because our game is not rock paper scissors, but it’s a game between two political parties.

Preet Bharara:

Stearns is saying that these two-party political rivalries tend to supersede the institutional rivalries, which essentially breaks the checks and balances system intended by the separation of powers. But if a two-party presidential system is prone to gridlock and instability, how does a parliamentary democracy offer a different path? What mechanisms make it more flexible and less polarized? To understand that, let’s once again start with the basics.

Max Stearns:

So a parliamentary democracy is a scheme in which the voters are not choosing directly the head of government. Instead, there’s a method of electing the legislative body. In large democracies, it tends to be an upper and lower chamber. And the lower chamber is where the ultimate source of authority is to determine who’s going to head the government, called the Prime Minister.

Preet Bharara:

All parliamentary democracies operate differently, but many share a key distinction. Voters cast two votes, one for their local representative and another for a political party. That means more than just two parties compete for power.

Max Stearns:

If you do not have a single party that gets a majority, then those parties are going to form coalitions after the election in order to gain a majority. And then the controlling coalition will then choose the head of the government.

Preet Bharara:

It might seem counterintuitive, but according to Stearns, relinquishing the direct election of a president could actually give voters more influence over their government.

Max Stearns:

If it’s done right, you’re able to give much greater voice and have much greater power as a voter than if you’re forced to make a choice between two candidates that you fundamentally are unhappy with. It’s fair to say every election cycle, voters want more choices. And we’re realizing again, and again, and again that although we have the appearance of direct influence, our choices are so constrained to candidates who make us unhappy, that the reality is that we actually have less influence than voters in systems that combine a degree of party proportionality with legislative selection of the head of government.

Let’s say you’re a progressive Democrat, you can vote for the Progressive Party, and basically signal, “I want the coalition to move in a progressive direction.” You’re able to, with almost surgical precision, convey the direction that you want the government to move. And that’s far more empowering.

Preet Bharara:

And there’s another key advantage to selecting a president this way. Coalition building. Unlike the zero-sum battles we see in US politics, coalition governments require compromise.

Max Stearns:

This makes the president work across party lines. Imagine that you had a campaign where instead of denigrating the other side, and always insulting the other side as either evil or stupid, the way our campaigns tend to operate today, the campaigns took this form, “I really want you to support me, but I want you to know that if I’m not your first choice, I can work with the party that you might support.”

But you want candidates who understand that what’s vital to democracy is a willingness to soften the edges of your commitment to work with others because the vital goal of effective democratic governance is simply more important than ideological purity.

Preet Bharara:

While the United States isn’t abandoning its presidential system anytime soon, there may be lessons we can take from parliamentary democracies to make our system more functional and less divisive. And as Max mentions in his book, one of the most important lessons is acknowledging that no democracy is perfect.

Max Stearns:

When we recognize that all democratic systems are imperfect, it liberates us to recognize ours must be imperfect too. And so what we really want to do is not look for the perfect system. We want to look for real adaptations, things that could actually be enacted in our system that won’t make our system perfect, it’ll still be imperfect, but will make it better. And when it’s better, we can tackle remaining problems.

Preet Bharara:

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guests, John McWhorter and Max Stearns.

If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me at @PreetBharara with the hashtag #AskPreet. You can also now reach me on Bluesky, or you can call and leave me a message at 833-997-7338. That’s 833-99-PREET. Or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com.

Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The editorial producers are Noa Azulai and Jake Kaplan. The associate producer is Claudia Hernández. And the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, Nat Weiner, and Liana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, stay tuned.