It's the Brian Laird Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. I'm Bridget Bergen, in for Brian today. The English language has been known to evolve, especially when it comes to nouns, verbs, and adjectives.

Think just in our lifetimes how many of us were, quote, slacking our colleagues, or door-dashing our dinners, or downloading our favorite podcasts, just five, ten, fifteen years ago.

But pronouns have generally stayed the same.

That is, of course, until we began to use they to denote non-binary identity.

Our next guest acknowledges while it serves a very real linguistic need, many English speakers

find it confusing, especially older generations.

And he's got a suggestion. In fact, he's got a whole

book about pronouns. Joining us now is John McWhorter, Columbia University linguistics professor,

host of the Lexicon Valley podcast, opinion writer at the New York Times, and the author

of the new book, Pronoun Trouble, The Story of Us in Seven Little Words.

Professor McWhorter, welcome back to WNYC.

Always happy to be here. Thank you, Bridget.

And listeners, we're going to talk about pronouns, so we'll take your calls on two tracks.

Yes, we'll definitely talk about the pronoun they as the first person singular.

So we want to hear from listeners who use that pronoun for themselves. When did you make the change?

What's been the hardest part when writing or communicating? And what do you want others to know?

The number 212-433 W-N-YC. That's 212-433-9692.

And we also know some Ryan Lairshow fans are just straight-up grammar nerds.

I say that with love.

So what have you always wanted to ask a linguistics expert?

Call with your questions again, 212-433 W-N-YC. That's 212-433-9-6-92. You can also text at that number.

Professor McWhorter, you write about how nouns are updated all the time, iPhone, NFT. There are new verbs like email, text, and ping, and new adjectives like

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