“To mess with our pronouns is to mess with our sense of the order of things, what’s up and what’s down — life itself,” the Columbia University linguist, prolific author, columnist, and podcaster John McWhorter emphasizes in his new book, Pronoun Trouble: The Story of Us in Seven Little Words. “Pronouns are used so frequently, so below the level of consciousness, and correspond to categories so fundamental to human experience that they are all deeply resistant to change by fiat.”

Most any language’s limited number of pronouns, so ubiquitous and indispensable for shorthand communication as to be used more or less subconsciously, are particularly resistant to abrupt transmogrification even as they may gradually streamline or grow more complicated depending on context and perhaps, the author suggests, a certain degree of chaos theory. Unapologetically named after a bit in an old Daffy Duck cartoon, and replete with pop cultural touchstones, McWhorter’s volume affectionately showcases an array of vernacular innovation around the world and throughout the ages, from the Americas to the Shetland Islands to Japan, and the ways in which languages and patois almost always organically evolve to fit generation upon generation of real people’s needs, experiences, and pronunciations.