Gender-neutral pronoun
Encyclopedia
A gender-neutral pronoun is a pronoun
that is not associated with any gender
. It designates two distinct grammatical phenomena, the first being pronouns/periphrastics that have been assigned nontraditional meanings in modern times out of a concern for gender equity, and the second being genderless pronouns that occur traditionally in human languages.
In some languages — notably most Indo-European
, Afro-Asiatic
and a number of Niger–Congo languages
— some personal pronoun
s intrinsically distinguish male from female; the selection of a pronoun necessarily specifies, at least to some extent, the gender of what is referred. Traditionally, the masculine form has been taken to be the markless
form, that is the form to be used unless it is known to be inappropriate. This has dictated the masculine pronoun in cases such as
Since as early as 1795, this property has led to the call for gender-neutral pronouns. The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis
is a common justification, in addition to humanist and pluralistic reasons, for applying gender-neutral pronouns to the English language. Attempts to invent pronouns for this purpose date back at least to 1850.
Many languages allow the speaker to specify whether one is talking about a male or female, but some languages do not require the speaker to make that choice as an intrinsic part of the language. In some languages, pronouns do not distinguish between genders, so gender equity of pronouns is not relevant. This category includes many East Asian languages
(see below) as well as the Uralic languages
.
makes no difference in gender in any of its pronouns. Pronouns are differentiated in terms of person, number, social relationship (intimate vs. familiar vs. formal), and proximity to the speaker (proximal vs. distal vs. non-present).
, the new written form , as a pronoun, was created to specifically represent she, and 他 is now sometimes restricted to meaning he. This language reform
was part of a modernization movement, which copied from European languages. In writing, / is used to mean he/she (respectively), (tā) to mean it (objects), (tā) to refer to animals, and (tā) to denote gods. Although these pronouns are pronounced identically, the difference appears only in writing. The usage of all of these variations is not officially condoned by education authorities in Chinese-speaking countries, and these variations are typically not taught in school. Some traditionalists consider these pronouns as neologisms, but most accept both its usage and non-usage as correct.
With the exception of , each of these pronouns is formed from a radical that indicates the nature of its object. is formed from (rén), meaning person; is formed from 女 (nǚ), meaning woman; is formed from (niú), meaning cow; and is formed from 示 (shì), meaning revelation. is considered to be properly generic; an antonym to would be formed using the radical for male, (nán), and not that for person, (rén). At present, a specifically male pronoun formed from and is not in use.
There is a recent trend on the Internet for people to write "TA" (Latin letters T and A, derived from the pinyin of /) as a gender-neutral pronoun.
, the character most commonly used to record this is 佢; it may be used to refer to people of either gender. The practice of replacing the "" radical with "" (forming the character 姖) to specifically indicate the female gender may also be seen occasionally in informal writing; however, this is neither widely accepted nor grammatically or semantically required, and, unlike , the character has a separate meaning in standard Chinese.
's Grammar and Gender:
Baron goes on to describe how relics of these sex-neutral terms survive in some British dialects of Modern English (for example 'hoo' for 'she', in Yorkshire), and sometimes a pronoun of one gender might be applied to a person or animal of the opposite gender.
Governments, clubs, and other groups have interpreted sentences like 'every member must take off his shoes before entering the chapel' to mean that therefore female members may not enter the chapel. The Persons Case, the legal battle over whether Canadian
women counted as legal persons eligible to sit in the Senate
, partially turned on such a point.
By contrast, the Constitution of Ireland
describes the President of Ireland
throughout as 'he', yet the two most recent presidents were women; in 1997, four of the five candidates in the election were women. Efforts in a court case to argue that 'he' excluded women were dismissed by the Irish Supreme Court
, which ruled the term 'gender-neutral'. (The Constitution's primary version is in Irish
, where the male pronoun sé is considered gender-neutral.)
The use of "he" to refer to a person of unknown gender was prescribed by manuals of style and school textbooks from the early 18th century until around the 1960s, an early example of which is Anne Fisher's 1745 grammar book "A New Grammar".
This may be compared to usage of the word man to humans in general.
Gender-specific pronouns were also prescribed when one might presume that most members of some group are the same gender (although in recent times, such presumptions are seen as offensive).
The use of "he", "him" or "his" to be used as a gender-neutral pronoun, however, is today seen by some as prejudicial.
Some authors though, turn the convention of the "universal he" upon its head and instead use "she" as referring to a subject of unknown gender. For example, Shafi Goldwasser
, a noted female computer scientist—computer science being a field largely dominated by men—uses the pronoun "she" exclusively in her Lecture Notes on Cryptography in reference to cryptographic adversaries.
Since at least the 15th century, "they" (though, as with singular "you", used with verbs conjugated in the plural, not the singular), "them", "themself", "themselves", and "their" have been used, in an increasingly more accepted fashion, as singular pronouns. This usage of the word "they" is often thus called the singular "they"
. The singular "they" is widely used and accepted in Britain, Australia, and North America in conversation and in writing. It is important to note that this is not recognized by the SATs and other standardized tests. Many of the older examples include "each" or "every" or similar, causing mental admixture with genuine plural.
In modern colloquial speech, sometimes "they" is used even when the gender of the subject is obvious; because, in this case, it is believed that unless the referent is a specific person, then the pronoun "they" should be used:
Some sentences can be rephrased to use the impersonal pronoun 'one
'. However, in most informal contexts this usage of "one" is becoming increasingly uncommon, and being replaced by an impersonal usage of "you". Compare:
The periphrastics "she or he", "him or her", "his or her", "his or hers", "himself or herself" are seen by some as resolving the problem, though they are cumbersome. They can be abbreviated in writing as "he/she", "(s)he", "s/he", "him/her", "his/her", "himself/herself", but when spoken have no accepted abbreviation. This method also leaves out those who are not accurately described by "he" or "she". With the exception of "(s)he" and "s/he", one still has the choice of which pronoun to place first.
Authors sometimes employ rubrics for selecting "she" or "he" such as
Some groups and individuals have used non-standard pronouns, hoping they will become standard. Various proposals for such changes have been around since at least the 19th century. For example, abbreviated pronouns have been proposed: 'e (for he or she) or 's (for his/hers); h' (for him/her in object case); "zhe" (also "ze"), "zher(s)" (also "zer"), and "zhim" (also "mer") for "he or she", "his or her(s)", and "him or her", respectively; 'self (for himself/herself); and hu, hus, hum, humself (for s/he, his/hers, him/her, himself/herself). The American Heritage Book of English Usage says of these efforts:
According to Dennis Baron
, the neologism that received the greatest partial mainstream acceptance was Charles Crozat Converse's 1884 proposal of thon, a contraction of "that one" (other sources date its coinage to 1858 or 1859):
"Co" was coined by feminist writer Mary Orovan in 1970. "Co" is in common usage in intentional communities of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities
, and "Co" appears in the bylaws of several of these communities. In addition to use when the gender of the antecedent is unknown or indeterminate, some use it as gender-blind
language and always replace gender-specific pronouns.
Certain sites on the internet have also coined the gender-neutral pronoun "en".
The pronoun "phe" was coined at Brown University and is now used by The Female Sexuality Workshop at the University.
nouns and pronouns do not have grammatical gender.
does not support gender-specific pronouns. The main division in the third person singular pronoun is between humans ("hän") and animal/inanimate ("se").
, a South Caucasian language, has gender-neutral pronouns.
.
, the masculine singular pronoun sé is used when referring to masculine nouns, and the feminine when referring to feminine nouns; however, when referring to persons, the masculine or feminine pronoun is normally used for male or female persons respectively, regardless of grammatical gender. There is no gender-neutral pronoun, and official usage varies between systematically using sé nó sí ["him or her"] or using the pronoun of the appropriate gender for the noun referred to. However, the third-person masculine plural disappeared from Irish, and the (originally) feminine siad is now used for all instances of "they".
The English titles of 'Mr', 'Mrs', 'Miss', 'Ms' are all irrelevant as all people are referred to by the suffix . The more polite suffix is used only in certain contexts with people who are superior in social standing to you, and is also gender-neutral in usage. The most polite suffix usually, but not always, refers to males, and is rarely used in modern speech. Both and should be used with caution, and only with more than basic understanding of Japanese social structures.
There is a distinction between animate and inanimate, but this is restricted to the verbs that mean 'to exist': and and does not extend to pronouns. There is no equivalent of 'it'; instead something like would be used, although often the subject or topic would be left out and determined from context.
Japanese does have different styles of speech for men and women – see gender differences in spoken Japanese
– so it would be inaccurate to say that the language is entirely gender-neutral. However, for the equivalent of pronouns and titles, the language is essentially gender-neutral.
그 (geu) meant 'he', 'she', and 'it' like Chinese tā. But in Modern Korean geu usually means 'he'. 그녀 (geu-nyeo) with the suffix -녀(女, -nyeo) meaning woman, is used for 'she'. However, nowadays, massmedia use a gender-neutral pronoun '그 (geu)' to refer to a person of either gender as before, but there is no confusion because there is a very weak concept of gender in Korean.
그것 (geu-geot) means 'it'.
Sometimes geu-nyeo means more than 'she' as pronoun, because the word 그 (geu) is also used to show definiteness
, like the definite article 'that' in English.
and Indonesian
, as in most Austronesian languages
, there is no grammatical gender; the pronoun dia can mean he, she, him, or her—as well as his or her.
has no trace of grammatical gender: 'he',' she', and 'it' are all expressed by the same pronoun u (Persian
: او.) This lack of specification has allowed for fluidity in reading the gender of both human lovers and the divine beloved in Persian poetry
.
, as most Austronesian languages
, have no gender pronouns; in Tagalog
, for example, siya is used for people (whether male or female), and sometimes for animals.
in many Romance languages is determined by the grammatical gender
of the possessed object; the gender of the possessor is not explicit. For instance, in French
the possessive pronouns are sa for a feminine object, and son for a masculine object: son livre can mean either 'his book' or 'her book'; the masculine son is used because livre is masculine. Similarly, sa maison means either 'his house' or 'her house' because 'maison' is feminine. Non-possessive pronouns, on the other hand, are usually gender-specific.
pronouns, like the other members in the family of Turkic languages
, are gender-inclusive. The English pronouns 'he', 'she', and 'it' all correspond to the only Turkish third-person singular personal pronoun o.
, Estonian
and Hungarian
belong to the Uralic languages
family of languages (thus not Indo-European
) languages. All pronouns are gender-neutral. The third-person singular and plural personal pronouns are hän and he in Finnish, tema (ta) and nemad (nad) in Estonian and ő and ők in Hungarian, respectively, which always refer to persons or animals.
In the last few decades the Finnish spoken language has also moved in this direction. The third-person singular and plural are, respectively, se and ne, which according to the written language specifications refer to an inanimate object or an animal. In informal spoken Finnish, se and ne are routinely used in reference to humans of either gender, animals, and inanimate objects or entities. The distinction between "hän" and "se" is retained in formal situations and in written Finnish except reported informal speech. Thus, at a time when English is moving towards gender-neutrality, Finnish is moving to species-neutrality.
Pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
that is not associated with any gender
Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
. It designates two distinct grammatical phenomena, the first being pronouns/periphrastics that have been assigned nontraditional meanings in modern times out of a concern for gender equity, and the second being genderless pronouns that occur traditionally in human languages.
In some languages — notably most Indo-European
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
, Afro-Asiatic
Afro-Asiatic languages
The Afroasiatic languages , also known as Hamito-Semitic, constitute one of the world's largest language families, with about 375 living languages...
and a number of Niger–Congo languages
Niger–Congo languages
The Niger–Congo languages constitute one of the world's major language families, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area, number of speakers, and number of distinct languages. They may constitute the world's largest language family in terms of distinct languages, although this question...
— some personal pronoun
Personal pronoun
Personal pronouns are pronouns used as substitutes for proper or common nouns. All known languages contain personal pronouns.- English personal pronouns :English in common use today has seven personal pronouns:*first-person singular...
s intrinsically distinguish male from female; the selection of a pronoun necessarily specifies, at least to some extent, the gender of what is referred. Traditionally, the masculine form has been taken to be the markless
Markedness
Markedness is a specific kind of asymmetry relationship between elements of linguistic or conceptual structure. In a marked-unmarked relation, one term of an opposition is the broader, dominant one...
form, that is the form to be used unless it is known to be inappropriate. This has dictated the masculine pronoun in cases such as
- reference to an indefinite person, for example: "If anybody comes, tell him"
- reference to a group containing men and women, for example ("Your parents have arrived — they were early") uses the French masculine plural pronoun "ils" instead of the feminine "elles" but in English both translate to "they".
Since as early as 1795, this property has led to the call for gender-neutral pronouns. The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis
Linguistic relativity
The principle of linguistic relativity holds that the structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers are able to conceptualize their world, i.e. their world view...
is a common justification, in addition to humanist and pluralistic reasons, for applying gender-neutral pronouns to the English language. Attempts to invent pronouns for this purpose date back at least to 1850.
Many languages allow the speaker to specify whether one is talking about a male or female, but some languages do not require the speaker to make that choice as an intrinsic part of the language. In some languages, pronouns do not distinguish between genders, so gender equity of pronouns is not relevant. This category includes many East Asian languages
East Asian languages
East Asian languages describe two notional groupings of languages in East and Southeast Asia:* Languages which have been greatly influenced by Classical Chinese and the Chinese writing system, in particular Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese .* The larger grouping of languages includes the...
(see below) as well as the Uralic languages
Uralic languages
The Uralic languages constitute a language family of some three dozen languages spoken by approximately 25 million people. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Mari and Udmurt...
.
Bengali
Despite the fact that it possesses a very large and complex pronominal system, Standard BengaliBengali language
Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...
makes no difference in gender in any of its pronouns. Pronouns are differentiated in terms of person, number, social relationship (intimate vs. familiar vs. formal), and proximity to the speaker (proximal vs. distal vs. non-present).
Mandarin
In modern Mandarin Chinese, there is no gender distinction in pronouns in the spoken language: the pronoun (tā) means he, she, or it. However, around the time of the May Fourth MovementMay Fourth Movement
The May Fourth Movement was an anti-imperialist, cultural, and political movement growing out of student demonstrations in Beijing on May 4, 1919, protesting the Chinese government's weak response to the Treaty of Versailles, especially the Shandong Problem...
, the new written form , as a pronoun, was created to specifically represent she, and 他 is now sometimes restricted to meaning he. This language reform
Language reform
Language reform is a type of language planning by massive change to a language. The usual tools of language reform are simplification and purification. Simplification makes the language easier to use by regularizing vocabulary and grammar...
was part of a modernization movement, which copied from European languages. In writing, / is used to mean he/she (respectively), (tā) to mean it (objects), (tā) to refer to animals, and (tā) to denote gods. Although these pronouns are pronounced identically, the difference appears only in writing. The usage of all of these variations is not officially condoned by education authorities in Chinese-speaking countries, and these variations are typically not taught in school. Some traditionalists consider these pronouns as neologisms, but most accept both its usage and non-usage as correct.
With the exception of , each of these pronouns is formed from a radical that indicates the nature of its object. is formed from (rén), meaning person; is formed from 女 (nǚ), meaning woman; is formed from (niú), meaning cow; and is formed from 示 (shì), meaning revelation. is considered to be properly generic; an antonym to would be formed using the radical for male, (nán), and not that for person, (rén). At present, a specifically male pronoun formed from and is not in use.
There is a recent trend on the Internet for people to write "TA" (Latin letters T and A, derived from the pinyin of /) as a gender-neutral pronoun.
Cantonese
The Cantonese third person singular pronoun is keui5. In written CantoneseWritten Cantonese
Cantonese has the most well-developed written form of all Chinese varieties apart from the standard varieties of Mandarin and Classical Chinese. Standard written Chinese is based on Mandarin, but when spoken word for word as Cantonese, it sounds unnatural because its expressions are ungrammatical...
, the character most commonly used to record this is 佢; it may be used to refer to people of either gender. The practice of replacing the "" radical with "" (forming the character 姖) to specifically indicate the female gender may also be seen occasionally in informal writing; however, this is neither widely accepted nor grammatically or semantically required, and, unlike , the character has a separate meaning in standard Chinese.
Middle English
Historically, there were two gender neutral pronouns native to English dialects, 'ou' and 'a', but they have long since died out. According to Dennis BaronDennis Baron
Dennis Baron is a professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on the technologies of communication; language legislation and linguistic rights; language reform; gender issues in language; language standards and minority languages and...
's Grammar and Gender:
Baron goes on to describe how relics of these sex-neutral terms survive in some British dialects of Modern English (for example 'hoo' for 'she', in Yorkshire), and sometimes a pronoun of one gender might be applied to a person or animal of the opposite gender.
It
"It" (including "its" and "itself") is the most common and only third person, singular English gender-neutral pronoun; however, it is used only as a dummy pronoun in various impersonal constructions and to refer to abstractions, places, inanimate objects or materials, and non-human life of low order or unknown gender. The plural of "it"—"they"— is already used in all cases as a plural gender-neutral pronoun. The word "it", however, has an extremely impersonal connotation, even offensive, in common usage and is rarely used in English to refer to an unspecified human being or person of unknown gender. This is because the word "it" connotes that the person being specified is inferior to a person or is an object.Problems
The gender specificity of English pronouns may, arguably, create potential problems:- Gender bias can be interjected into language, and biased gender roles may be interjected into language. For example it is common to use the pronoun he if gender is unknown.
- A speaker may wish to mask the gender of the person being discussed, e.g., to avoid indicating whether a romantic partner is male or female (see pronoun gamePronoun game"Playing the pronoun game" is the act of concealing sexual orientation in conversation by not using a gender-specific pronoun for a partner or a lover, which would reveal the sexual orientation of the person speaking. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual people may employ the pronoun game when conversing...
). - A speaker may not know the referent's gender, and implying one may be misleading or otherwise inappropriate.
- A speaker may be referring to any hypothetical individual. In casual speech, "they" is often used, but in written works this may not be acceptable, due to its plurality. "One" may be used instead (see below), but is often considered overly bombastic.
- A speaker may be discussing someone who is arguably described poorly (or not at all) by the gender categories associated with "he" and "she," as in the case of a referent who identifies as genderqueerGenderqueerGenderqueer is a catch-all term for gender identities other than man and woman, thus outside of the gender binary and heteronormativity...
.
Legal controversy
Governments, clubs, and other groups have interpreted sentences like 'every member must take off his shoes before entering the chapel' to mean that therefore female members may not enter the chapel. The Persons Case, the legal battle over whether Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
women counted as legal persons eligible to sit in the Senate
Canadian Senate
The Senate of Canada is a component of the Parliament of Canada, along with the House of Commons, and the monarch . The Senate consists of 105 members appointed by the governor general on the advice of the prime minister...
, partially turned on such a point.
By contrast, the Constitution of Ireland
Constitution of Ireland
The Constitution of Ireland is the fundamental law of the Irish state. The constitution falls broadly within the liberal democratic tradition. It establishes an independent state based on a system of representative democracy and guarantees certain fundamental rights, along with a popularly elected...
describes the President of Ireland
President of Ireland
The President of Ireland is the head of state of Ireland. The President is usually directly elected by the people for seven years, and can be elected for a maximum of two terms. The presidency is largely a ceremonial office, but the President does exercise certain limited powers with absolute...
throughout as 'he', yet the two most recent presidents were women; in 1997, four of the five candidates in the election were women. Efforts in a court case to argue that 'he' excluded women were dismissed by the Irish Supreme Court
Supreme Court (Ireland)
The Supreme Court of Ireland is the highest judicial authority in the Republic of Ireland. It is a court of final appeal and exercises, in conjunction with the High Court, judicial review over Acts of the Oireachtas . The Court also has jurisdiction to ensure compliance with the Constitution of...
, which ruled the term 'gender-neutral'. (The Constitution's primary version is in Irish
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
, where the male pronoun sé is considered gender-neutral.)
Universal "he"
The use of "he" to refer to a person of unknown gender was prescribed by manuals of style and school textbooks from the early 18th century until around the 1960s, an early example of which is Anne Fisher's 1745 grammar book "A New Grammar".
- The customer brought his purchases to the cashier for checkout.
- In a supermarket, anyone can buy anything he needs.
- When a customer argues, always agree with him.
This may be compared to usage of the word man to humans in general.
- "All men are created equal."
- "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."
- "Man cannot live by bread alone."
Gender-specific pronouns were also prescribed when one might presume that most members of some group are the same gender (although in recent times, such presumptions are seen as offensive).
- A secretary should keep her temper in check.
- A janitor should respect and listen to his employers.
- Every plumber has his own tools.
- An OB/GYN must always be kind to her patients.
The use of "he", "him" or "his" to be used as a gender-neutral pronoun, however, is today seen by some as prejudicial.
Some authors though, turn the convention of the "universal he" upon its head and instead use "she" as referring to a subject of unknown gender. For example, Shafi Goldwasser
Shafi Goldwasser
Shafrira Goldwasser is the RSA Professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, and a professor of mathematical sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel.-Biography:...
, a noted female computer scientist—computer science being a field largely dominated by men—uses the pronoun "she" exclusively in her Lecture Notes on Cryptography in reference to cryptographic adversaries.
Singular "they"
Since at least the 15th century, "they" (though, as with singular "you", used with verbs conjugated in the plural, not the singular), "them", "themself", "themselves", and "their" have been used, in an increasingly more accepted fashion, as singular pronouns. This usage of the word "they" is often thus called the singular "they"
Singular they
Singular they is the use of they to refer to an entity that is not plural, or not necessarily plural. Though singular they is widespread in everyday English and has a long history of usage, debate continues about its acceptability...
. The singular "they" is widely used and accepted in Britain, Australia, and North America in conversation and in writing. It is important to note that this is not recognized by the SATs and other standardized tests. Many of the older examples include "each" or "every" or similar, causing mental admixture with genuine plural.
- I say to each person in this room: may they enjoy themselves tonight!
- Anyone who arrives at the door can let themself in using this key.
- Eche of theym sholde ... make theymselfe redy. — Caxton, Sonnes of Aymon (c. 1489)
In modern colloquial speech, sometimes "they" is used even when the gender of the subject is obvious; because, in this case, it is believed that unless the referent is a specific person, then the pronoun "they" should be used:
- If some guy beat me up, then I'd leave them.
- Every bride hopes that their wedding day will go as planned.
'One'
Some sentences can be rephrased to use the impersonal pronoun 'one
One (pronoun)
One is a pronoun in the English language. It is a gender-neutral, third-person singular pronoun, commonly used in English prose...
'. However, in most informal contexts this usage of "one" is becoming increasingly uncommon, and being replaced by an impersonal usage of "you". Compare:
- Each student should save his questions until the end.
- One should save one's questions until the end.
- You should save your questions until the end.
Modern solutions
It is contended that none of the traditional options is completely satisfactory except perhaps "they", though some linguists feel that it is irregular since it derives from a plural form. The universal "he" in particular has been a source of controversy. The 19th and 20th centuries saw an upsurge in consciousness and advocacy of gender equity. In that context, the traditional use of the universal 'he' appears biased toward men and against women. More gender-equitable suggestions have therefore been introduced.'(S)he'
The periphrastics "she or he", "him or her", "his or her", "his or hers", "himself or herself" are seen by some as resolving the problem, though they are cumbersome. They can be abbreviated in writing as "he/she", "(s)he", "s/he", "him/her", "his/her", "himself/herself", but when spoken have no accepted abbreviation. This method also leaves out those who are not accurately described by "he" or "she". With the exception of "(s)he" and "s/he", one still has the choice of which pronoun to place first.
Alternation
Authors sometimes employ rubrics for selecting "she" or "he" such as
- Use the gender of the primary author.
- Alternate between "she" and "he".
- Alternate by paragraph or chapter.
- Using "he" and "she" to make distinctions between two groups of people.
Invented pronouns
Some groups and individuals have used non-standard pronouns, hoping they will become standard. Various proposals for such changes have been around since at least the 19th century. For example, abbreviated pronouns have been proposed: 'e (for he or she) or 's (for his/hers); h' (for him/her in object case); "zhe" (also "ze"), "zher(s)" (also "zer"), and "zhim" (also "mer") for "he or she", "his or her(s)", and "him or her", respectively; 'self (for himself/herself); and hu, hus, hum, humself (for s/he, his/hers, him/her, himself/herself). The American Heritage Book of English Usage says of these efforts:
According to Dennis Baron
Dennis Baron
Dennis Baron is a professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on the technologies of communication; language legislation and linguistic rights; language reform; gender issues in language; language standards and minority languages and...
, the neologism that received the greatest partial mainstream acceptance was Charles Crozat Converse's 1884 proposal of thon, a contraction of "that one" (other sources date its coinage to 1858 or 1859):
"Co" was coined by feminist writer Mary Orovan in 1970. "Co" is in common usage in intentional communities of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities
Federation of Egalitarian Communities
The Federation of Egalitarian Communities is a group of egalitarian communities which have joined together with the common purpose of creating a lifestyle based on equality, cooperation, and harmony with the Earth....
, and "Co" appears in the bylaws of several of these communities. In addition to use when the gender of the antecedent is unknown or indeterminate, some use it as gender-blind
Gender-blind
Gender-blind is a term describing activities undertaken and services provided without regard to the gender of those who participate.- Choice of words :Unisex is an older term, and a misnomer meaning "one sex"....
language and always replace gender-specific pronouns.
Certain sites on the internet have also coined the gender-neutral pronoun "en".
The pronoun "phe" was coined at Brown University and is now used by The Female Sexuality Workshop at the University.
Summary
The following table summarizes the foregoing approaches.| Nominative (subject) Nominative case The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments... |
Objective (object) | Possessive determiner | Possessive pronoun Possessive pronoun A possessive pronoun is a part of speech that substitutes for a noun phrase that begins with a possessive determiner . For example, in the sentence These glasses are mine, not yours, the words mine and yours are possessive pronouns and stand for my glasses and your glasses, respectively... |
Reflexive Reflexive pronoun A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that is preceded by the noun, adjective, adverb or pronoun to which it refers within the same clause. In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphor that must be bound by its antecedent... |
|
| Traditional pronouns | |||||
| He He He is a third-person, singular personal pronoun in Modern English, as well as being a personal pronoun in Middle English.-Animals:... |
He laughed | I called him | His eyes gleam | That is his | He likes himself |
| She She She is the third person singular, feminine, nominative case pronoun in modern English.She can also may refer to:-Literature and film:* She: A History of Adventure, a novel by H... |
She laughed | I called her | Her eyes gleam | That is hers | She likes herself |
| It It (pronoun) "It" is a third-person, singular neuter pronoun in Modern English.-Usage:In English, words such as it and its genitive form its have been used to refer to human babies and pets, although with the passage of time this usage has come to be considered too impersonal in the case of babies, with many... |
It laughed | I called it | Its eyes gleam | That is its | It likes itself |
| One One (pronoun) One is a pronoun in the English language. It is a gender-neutral, third-person singular pronoun, commonly used in English prose... |
One laughed | I called one | One's eyes gleam | That is one's | One likes oneself |
| Conventions based on traditional pronouns | |||||
| She/he | She/he laughed | I called him/her | His/her eyes gleam | That is his/hers | She/he likes him/herself |
| S/he (compact) | S/he laughed | I called him/r | His/r eyes gleam | That is his/rs | S/he likes him/rself |
| Singular they Singular they Singular they is the use of they to refer to an entity that is not plural, or not necessarily plural. Though singular they is widespread in everyday English and has a long history of usage, debate continues about its acceptability... |
They laughed | I called them | Their eyes gleam | That is theirs | They like themself |
| Invented pronouns | |||||
| Ne laughed | I called nir | Nir eyes gleam | That is nirs | Ne likes nyself | |
| Spivak Spivak pronoun The Spivak pronouns are a proposed set of gender-neutral pronouns in English popularized by LambdaMOO based on pronouns used by Michael Spivak. Though not in widespread use, they have been employed in gender-neutral language by some people who dislike the more common alternatives "he/she" or... (old) |
E laughed | I called em | Eir eyes gleam | That is eirs | E likes eirself |
| Spivak (new) | Ey laughed | I called em | Eir eyes gleam | That is eirs | Ey likes emself |
| Humanist | Hu laughed | I called hum | Hus eyes gleam | That is hus | Hu likes humself |
| Hy laughed | I called hym | Hys eyes gleam | That is hys | Hy likes hymself | |
| Ot laughed | I called ot | Ots eyes gleam | That is ots | Ot likes otself | |
| Yt laughed | I called yt | Yts eyes gleam | That is yts | Yt likes ytself | |
| Thon | Thon laughed | I called thon | Thons eyes gleam | That is thons | Thon likes thonself |
| Ve | Ve laughed | I called ver | Vis eyes gleam | That is vis | Ve likes verself |
| Xe | Xe laughed | I called xem | Xyr eyes gleam | That is xyrs | Xe likes xemself |
| Ze (or zie or sie) and zir | Ze laughed | I called zir/zem | Zir/Zes eyes gleam | That is zirs/zes | Ze likes zirself |
| Ze (or zie or sie) and hir | Ze laughed | I called hir | Hir eyes gleam | That is hirs | Ze likes hirself |
| Ze and mer | Ze laughed | I called mer | Zer eyes gleam | That is zers | Ze likes zemself |
| Zhe, Zher, Zhim | Zhe laughed | I called zhim | Zher eyes gleam | That is zhers | Zhe likes zhimself |
| Ze laughed | I called zem | Zeir eyes gleam | That is zeirs | Ze likes zemself | |
| Ze laughed | I called zer/zim | Zer/Zis eyes gleam | That is zers/zis | ze likes zerself/zimself | |
| En laughed | I called en | Ens eyes gleam | That is ens | En likes enself | |
| Co laughed | I called co | Co's eyes gleam | That is co's | Co likes coself | |
| Phe laughed | I called Phe | Phe′s eyes gleam | That is Phe′s | Phe likes Phesself | |
| Per laughed | I called per | pers eyes gleam | That is pers | Per likes perself | |
| Yo | Yo laughed | I called yo | yos eyes gleam | That is yos | Yo likes yoself |
| Shklee (Futurama) | Shklee laughed | I called shklim | shklir eyes gleam | That is shkilrs | Shklee likes shklimself |
Esperanto
Esperanto has no official gender-neutral pronouns, but there are several unofficial proposals – see the article for details.Estonian
In EstonianEstonian language
Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...
nouns and pronouns do not have grammatical gender.
Finnish
The Finnish languageFinnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
does not support gender-specific pronouns. The main division in the third person singular pronoun is between humans ("hän") and animal/inanimate ("se").
Georgian
GeorgianGeorgian language
Georgian is the native language of the Georgians and the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.Georgian is the primary language of about 4 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad...
, a South Caucasian language, has gender-neutral pronouns.
German
The gender-neutral pronoun "man", used similarly to the English pronoun "one", is widely used in both written and spoken GermanGerman language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
.
Irish
In IrishIrish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
, the masculine singular pronoun sé is used when referring to masculine nouns, and the feminine when referring to feminine nouns; however, when referring to persons, the masculine or feminine pronoun is normally used for male or female persons respectively, regardless of grammatical gender. There is no gender-neutral pronoun, and official usage varies between systematically using sé nó sí ["him or her"] or using the pronoun of the appropriate gender for the noun referred to. However, the third-person masculine plural disappeared from Irish, and the (originally) feminine siad is now used for all instances of "they".
Japanese
Japanese does not have pronouns in the Indo-European sense, but does have nouns that are similar to pronouns. For example, and can be used for 'he' and 'she'. However, kare in its plural form may supposedly refer to a group of mixed gender. Depending on context, kare or kanojo may also refer to 'boyfriend' or 'girlfriend' respectively. This is not commonplace and the phrase and other similar phrases would be more appropriate. The most common way to refer to another person is by title or affiliation, e.g. or . In general, the Japanese avoid using pronouns when they can be determined from context, and often use a person's name where English would use a pronoun. This can be seen in the custom of often referring to oneself by name rather than by most commonly by women or by men, both meaning 'I/myself'.The English titles of 'Mr', 'Mrs', 'Miss', 'Ms' are all irrelevant as all people are referred to by the suffix . The more polite suffix is used only in certain contexts with people who are superior in social standing to you, and is also gender-neutral in usage. The most polite suffix usually, but not always, refers to males, and is rarely used in modern speech. Both and should be used with caution, and only with more than basic understanding of Japanese social structures.
There is a distinction between animate and inanimate, but this is restricted to the verbs that mean 'to exist': and and does not extend to pronouns. There is no equivalent of 'it'; instead something like would be used, although often the subject or topic would be left out and determined from context.
Japanese does have different styles of speech for men and women – see gender differences in spoken Japanese
Gender differences in spoken Japanese
The Japanese language is unusual among major languages in the high degree to which the speech of women collectively differs from that of men. Differences in the ways that girls and boys use language have been detected in children as young as three years old ....
– so it would be inaccurate to say that the language is entirely gender-neutral. However, for the equivalent of pronouns and titles, the language is essentially gender-neutral.
Korean
Before industrialization, in KoreanKorean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
그 (geu) meant 'he', 'she', and 'it' like Chinese tā. But in Modern Korean geu usually means 'he'. 그녀 (geu-nyeo) with the suffix -녀(女, -nyeo) meaning woman, is used for 'she'. However, nowadays, massmedia use a gender-neutral pronoun '그 (geu)' to refer to a person of either gender as before, but there is no confusion because there is a very weak concept of gender in Korean.
그것 (geu-geot) means 'it'.
Sometimes geu-nyeo means more than 'she' as pronoun, because the word 그 (geu) is also used to show definiteness
Definiteness
In grammatical theory, definiteness is a feature of noun phrases, distinguishing between entities which are specific and identifiable in a given context and entities which are not ....
, like the definite article 'that' in English.
Malay and Indonesian
In MalayMalay language
Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...
and Indonesian
Indonesian language
Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a normative form of the Riau Islands dialect of Malay, an Austronesian language which has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries....
, as in most Austronesian languages
Austronesian languages
The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...
, there is no grammatical gender; the pronoun dia can mean he, she, him, or her—as well as his or her.
Persian
The Persian languagePersian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
has no trace of grammatical gender: 'he',' she', and 'it' are all expressed by the same pronoun u (Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
: او.) This lack of specification has allowed for fluidity in reading the gender of both human lovers and the divine beloved in Persian poetry
Persian literature
Persian literature spans two-and-a-half millennia, though much of the pre-Islamic material has been lost. Its sources have been within historical Persia including present-day Iran as well as regions of Central Asia where the Persian language has historically been the national language...
.
Philippine languages
All Philippine languagesLanguages of the Philippines
In the Philippines, there are between 120 and 175 languages, depending on the method of classification. Four languages no longer have any known speakers. Almost all the Philippine languages belong to the Austronesian language family...
, as most Austronesian languages
Austronesian languages
The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...
, have no gender pronouns; in Tagalog
Tagalog language
Tagalog is an Austronesian language spoken as a first language by a third of the population of the Philippines and as a second language by most of the rest. It is the first language of the Philippine region IV and of Metro Manila...
, for example, siya is used for people (whether male or female), and sometimes for animals.
Romance languages
The choice of possessive pronounPossessive pronoun
A possessive pronoun is a part of speech that substitutes for a noun phrase that begins with a possessive determiner . For example, in the sentence These glasses are mine, not yours, the words mine and yours are possessive pronouns and stand for my glasses and your glasses, respectively...
in many Romance languages is determined by the grammatical gender
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
of the possessed object; the gender of the possessor is not explicit. For instance, in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
the possessive pronouns are sa for a feminine object, and son for a masculine object: son livre can mean either 'his book' or 'her book'; the masculine son is used because livre is masculine. Similarly, sa maison means either 'his house' or 'her house' because 'maison' is feminine. Non-possessive pronouns, on the other hand, are usually gender-specific.
Turkic Languages
All TurkishTurkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
pronouns, like the other members in the family of Turkic languages
Turkic languages
The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...
, are gender-inclusive. The English pronouns 'he', 'she', and 'it' all correspond to the only Turkish third-person singular personal pronoun o.
Uralic languages
FinnishFinnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
, Estonian
Estonian language
Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...
and Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
belong to the Uralic languages
Uralic languages
The Uralic languages constitute a language family of some three dozen languages spoken by approximately 25 million people. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Mari and Udmurt...
family of languages (thus not Indo-European
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
) languages. All pronouns are gender-neutral. The third-person singular and plural personal pronouns are hän and he in Finnish, tema (ta) and nemad (nad) in Estonian and ő and ők in Hungarian, respectively, which always refer to persons or animals.
In the last few decades the Finnish spoken language has also moved in this direction. The third-person singular and plural are, respectively, se and ne, which according to the written language specifications refer to an inanimate object or an animal. In informal spoken Finnish, se and ne are routinely used in reference to humans of either gender, animals, and inanimate objects or entities. The distinction between "hän" and "se" is retained in formal situations and in written Finnish except reported informal speech. Thus, at a time when English is moving towards gender-neutrality, Finnish is moving to species-neutrality.
See also
- Epicenism
- Gender-neutral languageGender-neutral languageGender-neutral language, gender-inclusive language, inclusive language, or gender neutrality is linguistic prescriptivism that aims to eliminate reference to gender in terms that describe people...
- Gender neutrality in English
- Gender-neutrality in genderless languagesGender-neutrality in genderless languagesGender neutrality in genderless languages is typically achieved by using gender-inclusive words instead of gender-specific ones when one speaks of people whose gender is unknown, ambiguous, or unimportant...
- Gender-neutrality in languages with grammatical genderGender-neutrality in languages with grammatical genderGender neutrality in languages with grammatical gender implies promoting language usage which is balanced in its treatment of the genders. For example, advocates of gender-neutral language challenge the traditional use of masculine nouns and pronouns when referring to both genders or to a person...
- Grammatical genderGrammatical genderGrammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
- Singular theySingular theySingular they is the use of they to refer to an entity that is not plural, or not necessarily plural. Though singular they is widespread in everyday English and has a long history of usage, debate continues about its acceptability...
- Spivak PronounSpivak pronounThe Spivak pronouns are a proposed set of gender-neutral pronouns in English popularized by LambdaMOO based on pronouns used by Michael Spivak. Though not in widespread use, they have been employed in gender-neutral language by some people who dislike the more common alternatives "he/she" or...
External links
- Gender-Neutral Pronouns, a style guide
- Gender Neutral Pronoun Frequently Asked Questions
- Gender-free Legal Writing
- The Epicene Pronouns: A Chronology of the Word That Failed (link updated 5-31-06)
- Footnotes: pronouns
- On the Creation of "She " in Japanese
- Regender can translate webpages to use gender-neutral pronouns.
- Is there a gender-neutral substitute for "his or her"?
- Grammar Girl, Quick and Dirty tips for Better Writing / Yo as Pronoun.