License Suspended

"He's going to tell him about it today."
"I hope he knows what he's talking about and who he's talking to."
"Huh?  Of course he does, we've been over this lots of times.  He knows."
"Well, I can't be sure." 
"Why not?  He has been telling us he would for weeks."
"And, I'm supposed to know what he's telling him about?  Because I sure don't."
"I guess you don't.  How many times do I have to tell you?  He knows what to do."
"Well, who's he?"
"Who's who?"

I tell you, it's little wonder I get lost in the wilderness in a conversation like this one.  There was not a single noun to grab hold of, I was lost at the bottom of a mountain of pronouns.  Grammarians tell us that "pronouns are used in place of a noun to make a sentence less cumbersome and repetitive."  I think it's supposed to be understood that your sentence, however less repetitive and/or cumbersome, must still be one a person can follow;  I have found seven to nine kinds of pronouns,  My story above was chock-full of personal pronouns, so let's stick with those.  Don't get me started on the other six or eight (like possessive pronouns--does anybody out there know how to keep "there," "they're" and "their" straight?

Pronouns are, at times, the bane of my existence.  I have a few people in my life whose "pronoun-ing" license ought to be suspended.    It's either that or I will have to try to make the pronoun version of "Who's On First," which is my favorite comic routine of all time.  What was the famous line that led to the fateful charge of the light brigade?  My belief is there was a pronoun involved.  

It begins innocently enough, with the personal pronouns and the first person pronoun--"I."  It's hard to mistake that one.  It's usually clear who is the topic of discussion, or the actor in the scene, so to speak.  "I am going home," or "I am confused."  No need to point out who is involved.  It becomes a bit less clear when we move on to the plural first person, "we."  There is a famous line from a joke about the Lone Ranger and his loyal companion, Tonto.   "Who's we, kemosahbe?"  On occasion, someone will start a sentence like this.  "We need to ....," or "We're going to ..."  The problems arise when not everyone in the room is part of the "we."  Have you been there?  My thought is that people who misuse "we" are often just assuming that everyone agrees with them.  Can you say "self-centered?"  "I" is safer than "we," at least when it comes to clear communication.  

A similar problem arises in the second person pronoun, "you."  If only the two of us are in the room, and the speaker says "you," you are pretty clear about who "you" is.  (Don't you just love it when you can say "you is" and proclaim it is correct usage?).  If the scene moves to a room full of people and a person raises his voice and says "you are crazy," one cannot be sure if the you is being used in a singular, plural or collective sense.  When I first arrived here in the South, I thought native speakers might have a leg up on the rest of the English-speaking world.  They had a way of distinguishing "you" in the singular from "you" in the plural or collective sense.  (You have to have heard of "you-all" or, more commonly, "y'all.")  For months, I thought this was a minor foothold on the mountain of pronouns.  But then it happened.  I began to notice native speakers using "y'all" when there were only two of us in the room.  At first, I would look over my shoulder, thinking (nay, hoping) someone had stepped into the room to join us.  But, no.  "Y'all" is used in the singular, too.   There is no easier way to climb the mountain here.  Now I realize, there is only one way you can be sure you is being used in the singular.  "You" is only clear when there is only one person besides the speaker in the room. 

As demonstrated in the little conversation with which I opened this note, the third person pronoun is never safe without a liberal sprinkling of antecedents.  I realize that many people don't know an antecedent from an ant, but it is the toll one must pay to have a license to pronoun.  Please, teachers of grammar out there, bring back the antecedents.  I will even accept antecedents that don't agree with their pronouns, I don't mind a disagreement, as long as we are climbing the mountain, so to speak, and not running around in circles (or bases, if you prefer Abbott and Costello's paradigm).