Jacob went to the store to get some guacamole supplies. I use “they” as my pronoun, so you could talk about me like this: It changes with each type of gender-neutral pronoun, but the conjugation for the singular “they” is fairly intuitive. I guess gender-neutral pronouns are grammatically correct. The addition of gender-neutral pronouns in the English language is just another part of that evolution. Language changes it grows, expands, morphs and adapts to meet the needs of the modern day. “At some point in the past, ‘Ms.’ was a new honorific to recognize a woman who didn’t want to be addressed solely on the basis of her marital status,” says Adams. Kind of! Like gender, language is necessarily a creative enterprise that changes over time. So we can just make up any words we want now? It’s a more inclusive, fabulous way to go about it. I don’t know their gender, so I’m not going to artificially limit your fifth grade teacher’s gender identity to one of two options. Whether your fifth grade teacher likes it or not, “they” is now a recognized and grammatically correct singular pronoun.Īlso, I don’t know the gender identity of your fifth grade teacher, which is why I used “they,” rather than “he or she.” Not only is “they” a more streamlined option, “they” also allows room for the possibility that your fifth grade teacher didn’t identify as a man or a woman at all! Maybe they were genderqueer. Merriam-Webster and the Oxford dictionary both also include the singular “they.” In fact, the 200 linguists at the American Dialect Society declared the singular “they” the 2015 word of the year. While I’m sure your fifth grade teacher meant well when they were teaching you the rules about pronouns, the rules you learned in fifth grade are most likely outdated by now. Is my fifth grade teacher wrong about that? My fifth grade teacher always told me that using “they” as a singular pronoun was grammatically incorrect. If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. For your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered.
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