As much as I hope to raise our daughter in a not-quite-gender-neutral-but-not-dressing-her-in-tiaras-and-fairy-wings-from-birth-on happy medium, I've obviously had to prepare myself to have a daughter. This is, as I have mentioned, a) scary and b) scary. I've progressed enough that now I am utterly terrified of the years 12ish and above ( or however would be old enough to have a crush on the Jonas Brothers or whatever boy band flavor of the month exists in 2021ish*), which is a lot of progress from my initial state of being terrified from birth onwards. Progress!
So as we've made plans for a girl (not that there are really that many "plans" beyond: buy a lot of stuff and learn to change diapers), we mentioned yesterday that if we actually have a boy (which we 100% aren't) it would be problematic. This leads me to the following sentence, which we both attempted to construct properly:
"If she turns out to be a boy, she'll be in big trouble."
I don't think there is any correct/grammatical way to phrase that, pronoun-wise. It's kind of like how "I am sleeping," is somehow considered an acceptable sentence construction. Is there a way to get it right without completely altering the words and/or order? I think not. You can't do it and have the noun match the pronoun gender without throwing the entire idea out of whack.
"If he turns out to be a boy, he'll be in big trouble." What would that ever mean?
Babies. Always screwing up my pronouns.
*starting in 2010, can we all agree to please start saying "twenty-ten" instead of the inane "two thousand nine" or the make-me-claw-my-eyes-out "two thousand and nine"? I've been ready to go with this since twenty oh one, but if people continue to use the "two thousand" phrasing, I will go overboard and try to single-handedly start a backlash against unnecessary date-syllables by using too many, every time adding "Anno Domini" before I say the year, or perhaps the even more loathsome "Of the Common Era" afterward.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
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Just do what I does. I ain't never be thinkin' 'bout grammar, and lookie how good I talk.
ReplyDeleteMakes life easy-peazzzy.