“Marilyn, what are the positive, comparative and superlative degrees of ‘good’?”

She answered, “Good, better, best.”

“Very good, Marilyn.”

“And Arthur, almost asleep in the corner there: What are the three degrees of ‘high’?”

“Uh, the three degrees of ‘hi’ are ‘hi,’ ‘hello’ and ‘how do you do?’”

So went many lessons in the ‘40s, taught by nuns like Sister Mary Grammatica, our homeroom teacher at Immaculate Conception School.

It seemed that the grammar units were endless repetition, reading and reciting, going to the blackboard and diagramming sentences.

As a pupil in elementary school, I learned always to ask the impertinent questions, usually about the English language, and often got a laugh. It became addictive, cracking up the class without always realizing their raucous laughter wasn’t meant as applause or approbation but as a way of asking, “How did Arthur ever come up with that answer?”

Long before the de-sexing of the language, a movement that generated steam in the ‘70s, in which the word “he” ceased to apply to both male and females, I would wonder why it was necessary to refer to both genders, masculine and feminine, rather than letting the masculine form do the job.

For example, “Let each one do his own thing” was a no-no and needed to be recast as “his or her own thing.” Later in life, after having entered the work world, I submitted an article to a journal published by the state Education Association.

The editorial staff accepted it conditionally, provided I rewrite the entire article and “use the proper pronoun forms.” It was difficult enough for me to try to “over-qualify” each sentence by adding “or she” to sentences that needed it. No, the difficulty came in forcing myself to render references to male and female as “s/he,” which was the language journal’s style at the time. That way, no one would get the impression the writer was a cigar-chewing sexist male.

Only recently, the American Dialect Society voted to make “a gender-neutral singular pronoun as the Word of the Year for 2015.” The result is that the group now regards “they” as a singular pronoun.

But before getting into the nitty-gritty of the decision, let me explain that, according to the officers of the organization, “they” as a singular form had already appeared in works of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Jane Austen. And in 2015, the singular “they” “was embraced by the Washington Post style guide.”

I hate to break it to them, but the change simply will never fly. “They” has become so entrenched in the English language as a plural that doesn’t specify gender that it’s extremely unlikely it’ll ever be in general usage. Language is what people say it is, and organizations voting on such changes can’t always enforce the rules.

In everyday usage, we wonder, does it sound mellifluous to say, for example, “I took my wife to lunch and they ordered a burger?” Only the neighborhood bigamist might utter such a statement. How can we ever get used to referring to one person as a they?

On second thought, at least in Las Vegas, using “they” to refer to an individual is somewhat common. A student at Highlands’ registration said to me, “They told me I couldn’t sign up for this class.” The immediate and inevitable question becomes, “Who is they?”

And we hear, “They were talking about you after school.” What, pray tell, do you mean by “they”? Isn’t it usually just one person, and “they” serves as a way of hiding the identity of the gossiper?

The hoped-for effect of the ADA’s vote is to flex the English language so a plural could denote a singular, genderless, individual.

An article by linguist Lorraine Berry says that English novelist Jane Austen used “they” where the reader expects “he” or “she” 75 times in one novel, Pride and Prejudice. Writer A.A. Milne once lamented that “If the English language had been properly organised . . . there would be a word which meant both ‘he’ and ‘she.’”

Daily we come across — although we don’t always notice them — incorrect expressions. Sister Grammatica used to trick us into making an error in completing the following sentence: “I asked if anyone wanted ice cream, and I bought them some.”

Well, how else can we render the sentence when “someone” is singular and the ice cream-cravers is/are plural?

I wish good luck to the members of the American Dialect Society in pushing “they” as a singular. If they succeed, you’d better get used to speaking and hearing expressions like, “I really like Katherine Zeta Jones because they is beautiful.

No, the above sentence didn’t create a second beautiful actress, married to Michael Douglas. All that happened is that we now refer to her as a they. A clone?

• • •

The NFL did something right in reinstating the four-week ban on New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, he of “deflategate” fame. Remember when he played a large part of a game tossing soft-as-muffins footballs to his teammates?

• • •

On the Walgreens block in town, a well-lit sign reads “Urgent Care and Family Health.” Hasn’t that facility been closed for months?

• • •

Oops! Our bad. A recent letter to the editor of the Optic mentioned the Las Vegas Women’s Club’s many monetary donations toward scholarships, Habitat for Humanity, to food kitchens and the public library.

But our blasted spell-checker wasn’t familiar with the name of the philanthropist who helped build libraries around the country. “Carnegie” came out as “Carnage,” and that, my friends, gives an entirely different slant to the club’s generosity.