 So today I'm going on a rant because I asked on the community page and who knows you guys actually read that and responded so So I'm going on a rant today, and it's about things you can change and things you can't change in how you think one Might be the other Okay, so the nature of this thing has to do with two things going on One of them is that in the early 21st century. We thought we'd get a little bit political with our pronouns and you know Frankly, I don't care You know be referred to the way you want to be referred to whatever it doesn't make any difference to me, but the problem with the We've got a change of pronouns in English is that pronouns Fall into a category of words that we call closed. So I'm going to invent an English word called Flarn and You're gonna see that I can make the word florn Becomes several things in English. So I Have 30 florns Pretty clear that I can make that a noun The florn followed me home, you know, you can do things to it that you do with a noun So florn can be a noun and that's okay Florn can be a verb Caught myself florning yesterday. I Florn on a daily basis You florn on a daily basis But you see it can be a verb too. So nouns and verbs that seems to be okay Adjectives I can probably do that. I have a florn dog The florn walls of the house Needed some work and so I can make it I can major and make it an adjective I don't know that I can make it an adverb But I can say that I went to the store florn late So I mean I can shoehorn it into being an ad adverb if I want so those those four are examples of what we call an open category in language, but there are some closed categories I Put the doughnut florn the box. I tried using it as a preposition. It's like that doesn't seem okay or If I say florn works every day You're Grammatically going to want to read that as a noun and not Not some sort of a pronoun so generally speaking we don't like adding things like conjunctions and pronouns and Prepositions in English. We don't like to do that That's not to say that these things can't change but what it's called is closed category So we've got open category and you can add whatever words that you want and it's not a problem We also have closed category and closed category Doesn't want to just accept any old word Except that it does It takes a lot of time. So for example, I'm going to tell you about a closed category word And it's one that everybody who knows English and is listening to this nose and it's you You is a very interesting thing generally speaking when I say you I'm talking to one of you not a whole bunch of you guys and again, you can hear I'm doing this pretty naturally you guys as plural just because that's where I grew up if I grew up in a different part of the country I might say y'all or yins or use or who knows what but you guys is what I use so What on earth is up with that? so We're gonna back up just a little bit to the fabulous world of Middle English Early in the middle English period there was no distinction. I love there was a distinction between one of you and that would be thou and Two of you and that would be Yay Or if I saw you I'd say I wouldn't say I saw yay I said I saw you but saying you automatically meant two or more people and everybody knew it because if I saw just one person I'd say I saw the And everybody knew but the French Normans came in and they came in speaking French Norman and French Norman has something called the TV Distinction TV distinction is a fancy way of saying there's a Difference between how you refer to some people when you're talking to them not everybody gets called You you've got to say something polite and lots of European languages do this French does it they have and Spanish Does it it has who and who's dead? Italian does it you have who and lay and again whether these distinctions are Still really living breathing things or if they're kind of fading out of existence. I haven't seen a whole lot of who's dead Wine when I'm in Spanish speaking internet locations, but whatever The fact of the matter is they've got this politeness distinction how you refer to people well The English did not want to be left out when they came into contact with Norman French So what they decided was they would be they would say you to people just like you do in French remember He and boo So they decided they'd set something up like that in English with the and Yay which becomes the well now now and You over time, but I get ahead of myself. So this is going on 1200s 1300s and by the time Shakespeare comes around it is mostly a dead thing Everybody you're talking to is you though I'm sure if you've heard any Shakespeare You'll know that Shakespeare likes to say thou or you and sometimes he can be real flexible about one character referring To another character Switching between those two is like some sort of artistic effect pretty cool Well, the problem is is people want to be able to tell am I talking to one of you or am I talking to two of you? Who knows so we started coming up with all sorts of distinctions And this is by the way you can tell this has been pretty recent and it's fairly dialectical, but yeah, you get stuff like Y'all and you guys and all y'all and yins and all sorts of stuff like that But it's dialectical and it has to do with area and it's a language distinction like I just would never say You all unless I meant I want you all to do this But yeah, otherwise I'd say you guys and I'd probably work for him to say I want you guys all to do this What I digress But something really interesting is going on in English and it's been going on for the last 800 years So this is not a new thing that's happening in English we also have Singular they and singular they is really It really seems to be spreading I I really feel like I can use it in a lot more places than I Would expect so I'm a teacher. I take attendance and some will say hey, this student isn't here and I said I know where they're at Why just refer to one person I know where they are at I know where they're at and I wouldn't be surprised If over the next couple of centuries by the way dig me up Bring me back to life and I will pay you Probably nothing because I'll spend that for a while Anyway, my wager is this that they will continue to spread, you know So we will wind up losing the distinction between he and she we might wind up with a Human or animate like pet animals and Animals when we're being specific about who they are Those animals will be they People will be they pets will be they and then everything else will be it so like furniture will be it So we'll get some sort of animate inanimate distinction or maybe human not human distinction in our third person singular But that is going to mean that when someone says they're coming over now all of a sudden we're going to be stuck with Well, how many days are you talking about are you talking about one day or more than one day? So I would not be entirely surprised to hear that things like they guys and they all they ends start showing up in English in the next couple hundred years because people like to have those distinctions be clear if you liked my slight little rant about how you can't change things and How things are going to change anyway, even though you can't make it change and things will go in unpredictable directions And if you like my wager Especially the part where you dig me up after 200 years and revive me and brains If you like that Give me a thumbs up hit subscribe. I don't know. It's up to you make comments below I kind of like those though if you're one of my students, you don't need to say hi to me 50 times that was That was funny once. I don't know that I need that again But yeah, if you've got something real to say go ahead and hit me up Maybe next week we'll do something else. I've got a notion for a title card. I might try to come up with some sort of a Title thing for you guys. I don't know but my notion is Pete has special interests and then that way I can kind of talk about whatever I want anyway till next time