The English language has no established way to distinguish between single alters and full systems, and that can get confusing sometimes. If "I did a thing", did this alter do it, or did another, or did a few of us all collaborate? It can make a big difference: if "I'm" in a monogomous relationship, but "I" slept with someone else, did I cheat, or was it another alter who is not bound to that relationship and so cannot cheat? You can see how that might affect the trajectory of a system's life!
Being a median system (here meaning: no event amnesia), we often just forget to make a distinction. We'll use "we" and "I" interchangibly — though we might have some linguistic vertigo after the utterance. The fact is, the alters who front in masking contexts more are more likely to just use "I" when wethey mean "we", and those who stay inside or come out when we don't have to mask are more likely to use "I" for the specific alter and "we" for the system as a whole. Even then, it's tough because there is no clusivity distinction in English: the language doesn't differentiate between "we (you, me, and possibly others)" and "we (me and others, but not you)". If we want to (and think to) call out that the currently fronting alter is the one being referenced, we'll say "this one". Unfortunately, because we use "we" ambiguously singular and plural, we end up having to say something awkward like "we (uh, the system)" when we need to be clearer.
Just as an aside: the Bislama language is an English-based creole and does have a clusivity distinction. "Mi" and "yu" are 1st- and 2nd-person singular pronouns, while adding "-fala" ("mifala", "yufala") makes them (exclusive) plural. The inclusive 1st-person plural pronoun is "yumi", obviously a compound of the"yu" and "mi". If it were up to me, I'd load "yumi" (pronounced just like "you-me") right back into English. Interestingly, they also have dual and trial pronouns, all formed by adding "tu" and "tri" in various spots, again with quite obvious origins.
There are some pronoun sets out there, though!, and we find them fascinating!
Pronouns for the Whole System
One reasonably common practice, at least online, is to simply attacah an ampersand — pronounced "and" — to the end of an existing plural pronoun. Another, perhaps only slightly less common is to combine both singular and plural pronouns together. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find an "authoritative" source, nor even collect all the pronouns for either set.
- we& / us& / our& / our&s? / our&selves
- wei or wi / meus / myour? / mineours? / myourselves?
Redditor QuantumCatgirl attaches "s'-" to the front of existing 1st-person pronouns; it's a contraction for "system-". Apparently their friends also do it for 2nd-person pronouns, which is very awesome! I find the "y'all"-based set fun, as it's full of double contractions and even the rare triple contraction!
- s'we / s'us / s'our / s'ours / s'ourself(-selves)
- s'you / s'you / s'your / s'yours / s'yourself(-selves)
- s'y'all / s'y'all / s'y'all's / s'yall's / s'y'allselves
And of course, some of my friends have started using y'all for the system. I catch them correcting themselves after calling us& "you", forgetting the "you" is already a plural pronoun! It's quite amusing, but also oddly validating.
- you / you / your / yours / yourselves
- y'all / y'all / y'all's / yall's / y'allselves?
Pronouns for a Specific Alter
TODO (Dec '24)