“I don’t do pronouns”?
Really? Didn’t you know “you” and “I” are merely pronouns?
Saw this floating around somewhere. Liked it.
That’s one reasonable translation, I suppose.
But what if we take the anti-pronoun camp seriously for a minute. Do they really mean what they say?
A pronoun-free Pledge of Allegiance might change this —
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
into this —
__________ pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which _________ stands, ____ nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for ______.
“I,” “it,” and “all” are clearly pronouns.
I’m not sure about “one” as used here — seems like a noun phrase to me, which means that “one” is indeed a pronoun.
However, if “one” is meant as a common noun (e.g., “the number one”), then the comma is in the wrong place and we just say, “One, Nation” — two totally separate words that are not connected.
That seems stupid.
Maybe there are other forms that might apply to this use of “one” in that two word clause that convert it from a pronoun into some other word form— but I’ll leave that to grammarians.
The Pledge might be protected from pronoun promiscuity by inserting proper nouns in place of the clear pronouns and an article in place of “one”:
[NAME OF PLEDGER] pledges allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which [the Flag] stands, [a] nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for [people / citizens / etc.].
Proper? Possibly. But it’s godawful.
So let’s do pronouns, shall we?
