On Tuesday the Merriam-Webster dictionary announced the addition of 530 new words to the dictionary, including an addition of the singular usage of 'they' to refer to gender non-binary identifying folks. 

Taylor Carlson, executive director of Moose Jaw Pride, said it's a significant and empowering change for people in the LGBTQ+ community. 

"For anyone from any background or perspective," said Carlson, "it is very important and very empowering to see yourself and your experiences reflected in the broader public dialogue, whether that is through media, literature, in public policy discussions, or in the dictionary, so it's an empowering and important thing for those folks and for all folks." 

Many transgender and non-binary identifying people have been using they/them/their to refer to themselves for quite a while now, and Carlson says the singular usage is nothing new. 

"'They', as a singular pronoun, has existed as far as we know, at least in written word, since the 1300s. So it being used as a singular pronoun is nothing new, only that it is being added to the Merriam Webster dictionary. It's neat that we already kind of had this construct in English to refer to people in the third person without gendering them."

Carlson also noted that there are many languages in the world that include non-gendered terms such as Bengali, Persian, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Polynesian. 

"English is this funny language," said Carlson. "Across the entire linguistic spectrum, many languages have a non-gendered description for people, and it's just a normal part of that language. So for most of the world, it's not even something that they would consider - gendering folks that they are speaking of."

Some of the other words newly added to the Meriam Webster include “vacay,” “dad joke” and “escape room.”