Gender-specific and gender-neutral pronouns

A gender-specific pronoun is a pronoun associated with a particular grammatical gender, such as masculine, feminine, or neuter, or with a social gender (or sex), such as female or male. Examples include the English third-person personal pronouns he and she.

A gender-neutral pronoun, by contrast, is a pronoun that is not associated with a particular grammatical or social gender and that does not imply, for instance, male or female. Many English pronouns are gender-neutral, including they (which in certain contexts can also refer to a singular antecedent such as everyone, a person, or the patient).

Many of the world's languages do not have gender-specific pronouns. Others, however – particularly those that have a system of grammatical gender (or have historically had such a system, as with English) – have gender specificity in certain of their pronouns, particularly third-person personal pronouns.

Problems of usage arise in languages such as English, in contexts where a person of unspecified or unknown sex or social gender is being referred to but commonly available pronouns (he or she) are gender-specific. In such cases a gender-specific, usually masculine, pronoun is sometimes used with intended gender-neutral meaning; such use of he was also common in English until the latter half of the 20th century but is now controversial. Use of singular they is another common alternative but is not accepted by everybody. Some attempts have been made, by proponents of gender-neutral language, to introduce invented gender-neutral pronouns.

Overview

Some languages of the world (including Austronesian languages, many East Asian languages, the Quechuan languages, and the Uralic languages^[1]) do not have gender distinctions in personal pronouns, just as most of them lack any system of grammatical gender. In others, such as many of the Niger–Congo languages, there is a system of grammatical gender (or noun classes), but the divisions are not based on sex.^[2] Pronouns in these languages tend to be naturally gender-neutral.

In other languages – including most Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic languages – third-person personal pronouns (at least those used to refer to people) intrinsically distinguish male from female. This feature commonly co-exists with a full system of grammatical gender, where all nouns are assigned to classes such as masculine, feminine and neuter. However in some languages, such as English, this general system of noun gender has been lost, but gender distinctions are preserved in the third-person pronouns (the singular pronouns only, in the case of English.

In languages with grammatical gender, even pronouns which are semantically gender-neutral may be required to take a gender for such purposes as grammatical agreement. Thus in French, for example, the first- and second-person personal pronouns may behave as either masculine or feminine depending on the sex of the referent; and indefinite pronouns such as quelqu'un ("someone") and personne ("no one") are treated conventionally as masculine. See Grammatical gender: Gender of pronouns.)

Issues concerning gender and pronoun usage commonly arise in situations where it appears necessary to choose between gender-specific pronouns, even though the sex of the person or persons being referred to is not known, not specified, or (in the plural case) mixed. In English and many other languages, the masculine form has traditionally served as the default or unmarked form; that is, masculine pronouns have been used in cases where the referent or referents are not known to be (all) female. This leads to sentences such as:

• In English: If anybody comes, tell him. Here the masculine pronoun him refers to a person of unknown sex.
• In French: Vos amis sont arrivés — ils étaient en avance ("Your friends have arrived – they were early"). Here the masculine plural pronoun ils is used rather than the feminine elles, unless it is known that all the friends in question are female (in which case the noun would also change to amies and the past participle would change to arrivées).

See also Grammatical gender: Mixed and indeterminate gender.

As early as 1795, dissatisfaction with this convention led to calls for gender-neutral pronouns, and attempts to invent pronouns for this purpose date back to at least 1850, although the use of singular they as a natural gender-neutral pronoun in English is much older.^[3]

English

The English language has gender-specific personal pronouns in the third-person singular. The masculine pronoun is he (with derived forms him, his and himself); the feminine is she (with derived forms her, hers and herself); the neuter is it (with derived forms its and itself). These are described in full in the article on English personal pronouns.

Generally speaking, the masculine pronoun is used to refer to male persons (and some higher animals, such as pets); the feminine to refer to female persons and female animals, and sometimes figuratively in referring to such items as ships and countries; and the neuter to refer to inanimate objects and concepts, animals of unspecified or unimportant sex, and sometimes children of unspecified sex. For full details, see Gender in English. For the use of he for referring to a person of unspecified sex, as well as the various alternatives to this convention, see the discussion in the sections below.

The other English pronouns (the first- and second-person personal pronouns I, we, you, etc.; the third-person plural personal pronoun they; the indefinite pronouns one, someone, anyone, etc.; and others) do not make male–female gender distinctions, that is, they are gender-neutral. The only distinction made is between personal and non-personal reference (someone vs. something, who vs. what, etc.)

Historical and dialectal gender-neutral pronouns

Historically, there were two gender-neutral pronouns native to English dialects, ou and (h)a.^[4] According to Dennis Baron's Grammar and Gender:^[5]

In 1789, William H. Marshall records the existence of a dialectal English epicene pronoun, singular "ou": "'Ou will' expresses either he will, she will, or it will." Marshall traces "ou" to Middle English epicene "a", used by the 14th century English writer John of Trevisa, and both the OED and Wright's English Dialect Dictionary confirm the use of "a" for he, she, it, they, and even I. This "a" is a reduced form of the Anglo-Saxon he = "he" and heo = "she".

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.

In some West Country dialects, the pronoun er can be used in place of either he or she, although only in weak (unstressed) positions such as in tag questions.^[6]

More recently, in the city of Baltimore, and possibly other cities in the United States, yo has come to be used as a gender-neutral pronoun.^[7][8]

It and one as gender-neutral pronouns

Whereas "he" and "she" are used for entities treated as persons (including supernatural beings and, sometimes, sympathetic animals, especially pets), the pronoun "it" is normally used for entities not regarded as persons, though the use of "he" or "she" is optional for animals of known sex.^[9] Quirk et al. give the following example, illustrating use of both "it" and "her" to refer to a bird:

• The robin builds its nest in a well-chosen position ... and, after the eggs have hatched, the mother bird feeds her young there for several weeks.^[9]

The pronoun "it" can also be used of children in some circumstances, for instance when the sex is indefinite or when the writer has no emotional connection to the child, as in a scientific context.^[9] Quirk et al. give the following example:

• A child learns to speak the language of its environment.^[9]

According to The Handbook of Non-Sexist Writing, it is sometimes the "obvious" choice for children.^[10] Examples given include

• To society, a baby's sex is second in importance to its health.

but also the more colloquial

• When the new baby comes, it's going to sleep in Lil's room.

"It" may even be used when the child's sex is known. In the following story, the characters refer to the boy-child at the center of the narrative as a "he", but then the narrator refers to it as an "it":

• "He looks like nobody but himself," said Mrs. Owens, firmly. ... It was then that ... the child opened its eyes wide in wakefulness. It stared around it ...^[11]

In this case, the child has yet to be developed into a character that can communicate with the reader.

However, when not referring specifically to children, "it" is not generally applied to people, even in cases where their gender is unknown.

Another gender-neutral pronoun that can be used to refer to people is the impersonal pronoun "one". This can sometimes be used to avoid gender-specification issues; however, it cannot normally substitute for a personal pronoun directly, and a sentence containing "he" or "she" would need to be rephrased, probably with change of meaning, to enable "one" to be used instead. Compare:

• Each student should save his questions until the end.
• One should save one's questions until the end.

In everyday language, generic you is often used instead of one:

• You should save your questions until the end.

Generic he

It may be that forms of the pronoun he had been used for both sexes during the Middle English and Modern English periods. "There was rather an extended period of time in the history of the English language when the choice of a supposedly masculine personal pronoun (him) said nothing about the gender or sex of the referent."^[12] 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".^[13] Older editions of Fowler also took this view.^[14]

• 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 for humans in general (although that was the original sense of the word "man" in the Germanic languages, much as the Latin word for "human in general", homo, came to mean "male human"—which was vir, in Latin—in most of the Romance languages).

• "All men are created equal."
• "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."
• "Man cannot live by bread alone."

While the use, in formal English, of he, him or his as a gender-neutral pronoun has traditionally been considered grammatically correct,^[15] such use may also be considered to be a violation of gender agreement.^[16]:48 It has also been seen as prejudicial by some,^[16] as in the following cases:

• The Massachusetts Medical Society effectively blocked membership of female physicians on the grounds that the society's by-laws used the pronoun he when referring to members.^[16]:46
• The Persons Case, the legal battle over whether Canadian women counted as legal persons eligible to sit in the Senate, partially turned on use of "he" to refer to a (generic) person qualified to be a senator.^[17]

Its use in some contexts has also been ridiculed, or criticized as absurd or "silly":

"... everyone will be able to decide for himself whether or not to have an abortion."

— Albert Bleumenthal, N.Y. State Assembly (cited in Longman 1984), as quoted in Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage^[18]

"... the ideal that every boy and girl should be so equipped that he shall not be handicapped in his struggle for social progress …"

— C.C. Fries, American English Grammar (1940) quoted in Readers Digest 1983; as cited in Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage^[18]

"... She and Louis had a game—who could find the ugliest photograph of himself"

— Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin (1971) (quoted in Readers Digest 1983; as cited in Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage^[18]

• William Safire in his On Language column in The New York Times approved of the use of generic he, mentioning the mnemonic phrase "the male embraces the female".^[19] A reader replied with an example of use of the purportedly gender-neutral he:

  "The average American needs the small routines of getting ready for work. As he shaves or blow-dries his hair or pulls on his panty-hose, he is easing himself by small stages into the demands of the day."

  — C. Badendyck [sic], New York Times (1985);^[20] as quoted by Miller and Swift.^[16]:46

To redress the perceived imbalance resulting from use of generic he, some authors now adopt a generic she instead, or alternate between she and he. This and some other ways of dealing with the problem are described below.

Generic she

She has traditionally been used as a generic pronoun when making generalizations about people belonging to a group when most members of that group are assumed to be female:^[16]

• A secretary should keep her temper in check.
• A nurse must always be kind to her patients.

This avoidance of the "generic" he is seen by proponents of non-sexist writing as indicating that the purportedly gender-neutral he is in fact not gender-neutral since it "brings a male image to mind".^[16]

Singular they

Since at least the 14th century, they (used with verbs conjugated in the plural, as with you), them, their, theirs, and themselves or themself have been used, with varying degrees of general acceptance, as singular pronouns. This usage is often called the singular they. It is widely used and accepted in Britain, Australia, and North America in conversation.

• 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.
• "If a person is born of a . . . gloomy temper . . . they cannot help it."— Chesterfield, Letter to his son (1759)^[21]

They may be used even when the gender of the subject is obvious; they implies a generic (or representative of type class) rather than individuated interpretation:^[22]

• 'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother, since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear the speech — Shakespeare, Hamlet
• There's not a man I meet but doth salute me / As if I were their well-acquainted friend — Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors
• If some guy beat me up, then I'd leave them.
• Every bride hopes that their wedding day will go as planned.

Alternatives to generic he

Look up Appendix:English third-person singular pronouns or Appendix:List of protologisms/third person singular gender neutral pronouns in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

The generic, or universal, use of he as described above has been a source of controversy, as it appears to reflect a bias towards men and a "male-centric" society, and against women.^[23] The 19th and 20th centuries saw an upsurge in consciousness and advocacy of gender equity, and this has led in particular to preferences for gender-neutral language. Alternatives to generic he have consequently gained in popularity. The chief of these are described in the sections below.

He or she, (s)he, etc.

The periphrastics "he or she", "him or her", "his or her", "his or hers", "himself or herself" are seen by some as resolving the problem, though they are cumbersome. These periphrases can be abbreviated in writing as "he/she", "(s)he", "s/he", "hse",^[24] "him/her", "his/her", "himself/herself", but are not easily abbreviated in verbal communication. With the exception of "(s)he" and "s/he", a writer still has the choice of which pronoun to place first.

Alternation of she and he

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.
• Use he and she to make distinctions between two groups of people.

Preferred pronouns

Some groups and individuals have invented, borrowed and 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, h' for him or her in object case, and 's for his or her(s) or its; "zhe" (also "ze"), "zher(s)" (also "zer" or "zir"), "shi"/"hir", 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).

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^[25] or 1859^[26]):

Thon was picked up by Funk and Wagnall's Standard Dictionary in 1898, and was listed there as recently as 1964. It was also included in Webster's Second New International Dictionary, though it is absent from the first and third, and it still has its supporters today.^[27]

"Co" was coined by feminist writer Mary Orovan in 1970.^[28] "Co" is in common usage in intentional communities of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities,^[29] and "co" appears in the bylaws of several of these communities.^{[30][31][32][33]} 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.^[34]

Pronouns and LGBT people

For transgender people, style guides and associations of journalists and health professionals advise use of the pronoun preferred or considered appropriate by the person in question.^{[35][36][37][38]} When dealing with clients or patients, health practitioners are advised to take note of the pronouns used by the individuals themselves,^[39] which may involve using different pronouns at different times.^[40][41] This is also extended to the name preferred by the person concerned.^{[42] [43]} LGBT advocacy groups also advise using the pronouns and names preferred or considered appropriate by the person concerned.^[44] They further recommend avoiding gender confusion when referring to the background of transgender people^[45] (for instance by using Private Manning ^[46] to avoid a male pronoun or name).

For lesbian, gay, and bisexual people, the gender implications of pronouns can be important because referring to a significant other or potential love interest by a gender-specific pronoun can reveal their sexual orientation, whereas using a gender-neutral pronoun or phrasing would not.

Summary

The following table summarizes the foregoing approaches.

	Nominative (subject)	Oblique (object)	Possessive determiner	Possessive pronoun	Reflexive
Traditional pronouns
He	He is laughing	I called him	His eyes gleam	That is his	He likes himself
She	She is laughing	I called her	Her eyes gleam	That is hers	She likes herself
One	One is laughing	I called one	One's eyes gleam	That is "that one's"	One likes oneself
Conventions based on traditional pronouns
Singular they	They are laughing	I called them	Their eyes gleam	That is theirs	They like themself
She/he	She/he is laughing	I called him/her	His/her eyes gleam	That is his/hers	She/he likes him/herself
S/he (compact)	S/he is laughing	I called him/r	His/r eyes gleam	That is his/rs	S/he likes him/herself
Apostrophe	'E is laughing	I called h'	'S eyes gleam	That is 'rs	'E likes h'/h'self
Non-traditional pronouns
Elverson (1975)[47]	Ey is laughing	I called em	Eir eyes gleam	That is eirs	Ey likes eirself
Humanist[48]	Hu is laughing	I called hum	Hus eyes gleam	That is hus	Hu likes humself
Jee[49]	Jee is laughing	I called jem	Jeir eyes gleam	That is jeirs	Jee likes jemself
Ney[50]	Ney is laughing	I called nem	Neir eyes gleam	That is neirs	Ney likes nemself
Peh[51][52]	Peh is laughing	I called pehm	Peh's eyes gleam	That is peh's	Peh likes pehself
Per[53]	Per is laughing	I called per	Per eyes gleam	That is pers	Per likes perself
Spivak (1983)[54][55]	E is laughing	I called Em	Eir eyes gleam	That is Eirs	E likes Emself
Thon[56]	Thon is laughing	I called thon	Thons eyes gleam	That is thons	Thon likes thonself
Ve[57]	Ve is laughing	I called ver	Vis eyes gleam	That is vis	Ve likes verself
Xe[58]	Xe is laughing	I called xem	Xyr eyes gleam	That is xyrs	Xe likes xemself
Yo (regional)[59][60]	Yo is laughing	I called yo	—	—	?
Ze (or zie or sie) and zir (Germanic Origin)[61]	Ze is laughing	I called zir/zem	Zir/Zes eyes gleam	That is zirs/zes	Ze likes zirself/zemself
Ze (or zie or sie) and hir[62]	Ze is laughing	I called hir	Hir eyes gleam	That is hirs	Ze likes hirself
Ze and mer[63]	Ze is laughing	I called mer	Zer eyes gleam	That is zers	Ze likes zemself
Zhe[64]	Zhe is laughing	I called zhim	Zher eyes gleam	That is zhers	Zhe likes zhimself

Other languages

Indo-European languages

In most Indo-European languages (though not in the modern Indo-Iranian languages) third-person personal pronouns are gender-specific, while first- and second-person pronouns are not. The distinction is found even in languages which do not retain a masculine–feminine grammatical gender system for nouns generally, such as English and Danish. Sometimes the distinction is neutralized in the plural, as in most modern Germanic languages (examples of gender-neutral third-person plural pronouns include English they and German sie), and also in modern Russian (where the equivalent pronoun is они oni). However some languages make the distinction in the plural as well, as with French ils and elles, and Czech oni and ony, respectively masculine and feminine equivalents to "they". It is traditional in most languages, in cases of mixed or indeterminate gender, to use the masculine as a default.

Romance languages

For example, in French,

• First person singular je ('I'), me ('me')
• Second person singular (familiar) tu, te ('you')
• First person plural nous ('we', 'us')
• Second person plural vous ('you')
• Third person possessives leur ('their') and son/sa/ses ('his', 'her' 'its', 'their' (masculine-gender object)/ 'his', 'her' 'its', 'their' (feminine-gender object) / 'his', 'her' 'its', 'their' (objects) )

are all gender-inclusive; but

• Third person pronouns il ('he'), le ('him'), ils ('they', referring to an all-male or mixed-gender group) are all masculine.
• Third person pronouns elle ('she'), la ('her') and elles ('they', referring to an all-female group) are all feminine.

The choice of possessive pronoun 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 usually 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.

As in French, Catalan also determines the gender of object but not of the possessor, by possessive pronouns - seu stands for a masculine object (el seu llibre), while seva, seua or sa stands for a feminine object (la seva mansió).

Portuguese works with two sets of pronouns. One of them (seu for masculine and sua for feminine) follows the same rules as French and Catalan, with the gender determined by the object (o seu livro and a sua casa); in the other set (dele for masculine and dela for feminine), the gender is determined by the possessor as in English, so o livro dele is possessed by a masculine being and o livro dela is possessed by a feminine being.

In contrast, Spanish possessive pronouns agree with neither the gender of the possessor nor that of the possession. In the third person, the possessive pronoun su (or sus for plural - number agrees with the possession) is used. Example: Su libro could mean either "his book" or "her book", with the gender of the possessor being made clear from the context of the statement. Pronouns for referring to people in Spanish have gender - él for "him" and ella for "her", there is also the gender neutral lo for "it". Spanish pronouns are usually part of the verb and are used separately only when making a distinction. e.g. The verb vivir - "to live" would usually be conjugated in the third person as vive - "He/she lives". To make a distinction, one might say "ella vive en Madrid pero él vive en Barcelona" - "She lives in Madrid but he lives in Barcelona".

Italian also behaves like French, with phrases such as il mio/tuo/suo libro not implying anything about the owner's sex or the owner's name's grammatical gender. In the third person, if the "owner's" sex or category (person vs thing) is an issue, it is solved by expressing di lui, di lei for persons or superior animals or di esso for things or inferior animals. Lui scese e portò su le valigie di lei (He went downstairs and brought her luggage upstairs). This rarely happens, though, because it is considered inelegant and the owner's gender can often be inferred from the context, which is anyhow much more important in an Italian environment than in an English-speaking one.

Where a language has grammatical gender, gendered pronouns are sometimes used according to the grammatical gender of their antecedent, as French il ('he') for le livre ('the book' - masculine), whereas in Spanish, el libro is also masculine, but it would not be considered correct to refer to it by using the masculine pronoun él. Instead, something such as "Where is the book?" "It is on the table", would be rendered as "¿Dónde está el libro?" "Está sobre la mesa" where the pronoun is omitted. However, when the pronoun is used as a direct object, gender-specific forms reappear in Spanish. The sentence I can't find it. (always referring to the masculine noun libro (book)) would be No lo encuentro, whereas if I can't find it refers to a magazine (revista in Spanish, which is feminine) then the sentence would be No la encuentro.

If it is absolutely necessary to provide a subject when referring to an object, a demonstrative can be used instead of a pronoun: ¿Qué es eso? translates literally What is that?. And a suitable answer would be Eso es un libro or Eso es una revista, (That's a book, That's a magazine) with the genderless eso as subject in both cases.

Icelandic

Icelandic uses a similar system to other Germanic languages in distinguishing three 3rd-person genders in the singular - hann (masculine gender), hún (feminine gender), það (neuter gender). However it also uses this three-way distinction in the plural: þeir (m. only), þær (f. only), þau (n., which includes mixed gender). It is therefore possible to be gender-specific in all circumstances should one wish - although of course þau can be used for gender-inclusiveness. Otherwise the form used is determined grammatically (i.e., by the gender of the noun replaced). In general statements the use of menn could be preferable as it is less specific than þau.

Norwegian

In Norwegian, a new word was proposed, hin ('sie' or 'hir') to fill the gap between the third person pronouns hun ('her') and han ('him'). Hin is very rarely used, and in limited special interest groups; it is not embraced by society as a whole. A reason for the marginal interest in a neuter gender word is the constructed nature of the word, and that the word is homonymous with several older words both in official language and dialectal speech, such as hin ('the other') and hinsides ('beyond'). One can also use man or en or den (en means 'one'). These three are considered impersonal.

Swedish

In Swedish, the word hen was introduced in the 2010s as a replacement of the gender-specific hon ("she") and han ("he"). It can be used when the gender of a person is not known or when it is not desirable to specify them as either a "she" or "he". The word was first proposed in 1966, and again in 1994, with reference to the Finnish hän, a personal pronoun that is gender-neutral, since Finnish completely lacks grammatical gender. However, it did not receive widespread recognition until around 2010, when it began to be used in some texts, and provoked media debates and controversy.

It is currently treated as neologism by Swedish manuals of style. Major newspapers like Dagens Nyheter have recommended against its usage, though many journalists still use it. The Swedish Language Council has not issued any general recommendations against the use of hen, but advises against the use of the object form henom ("her/him"); it instead recommends using hen as both the subject and object form. Hen has two basic usages: as a way to avoid a stated preference to either gender; or as a way of referring to individuals who are transgender, who prefer to identify themselves as belonging to a third gender or who reject the division of male/female gender roles on ideological grounds. In late July 2014, the Swedish Academy announced that in April 2015, hen will be included in Svenska Akademiens ordlista, the most authoritative glossary on the Swedish language. Its entry will cover two definitions: as a reference to individuals belonging to an unspecified sex or third gender, or where the sex is not known.^[65]

Traditionally there are other variants of avoiding using gender-specific pronouns. "Vederbörande" ("the referred person"). "Man" ("one", as in "Man borde..."/"One should..."). "Denne" ("the one"). One method is rewriting into plural, as Swedish like English has only gender-neutral pronouns in plural.

Persian

The Persian language has no distinction between animated male and female. 'he' and ' she' are expressed by the same pronoun u (او). Singular inanimate as 'it' is referred by an (آن).

Tocharian

Uniquely among Indo-European languages, Tocharian A (also known as Eastern Tocharian) distinguishes gender in the first person, using näṣ for the male speaker and ñuk for the female speaker.^[66]

Chinese

Written Chinese has gone in the opposite direction, from non-gendered to gendered pronouns, though this hasn't affected the spoken language.

In spoken standard Mandarin, there is no gender distinction in personal pronouns: the pronoun tā (他) can mean "he", "she", or "it". However, when the antecedent of the spoken pronoun tā is unclear, native speakers will assume it is a male person.^[67] In 1917, the Old Chinese graph tā (她, from nǚ 女, "woman") was borrowed into the written language to specifically represent "she" by Liu Bannong. As a result, the old character tā (他), which previously also meant "she" in written texts, is sometimes restricted to meaning "he" only. In contrast to most Chinese characters coined to represent specifically male concepts, the character tā is formed with the ungendered character for person rén (人), rather than the character for male nán (男)."^[68]

The creation of gendered pronouns in Chinese was part of the May Fourth Movement to modernize Chinese culture, and specifically an attempt to assert sameness between Chinese and the European languages, which generally have gendered pronouns.^[67] Of all the contemporary neologisms from the period, the only ones to remain in common use are tā (它) for objects, tā (牠, from niú 牛, "cow") for animals, and tā (祂 from shì 示, "revelation") for gods. Although Liu and other writers tried to popularize a different pronunciation for the feminine tā, including yi from the Wu dialect and tuo from a literary reading, these efforts failed, and all forms of the pronoun tā retain identical pronunciation. This identical pronunciation of the split characters holds true for not only Mandarin but also many of the varieties of Chinese.^[68] There is a recent trend on the Internet for people to write "TA" in Latin script, derived from the pinyin romanization of Chinese, as a gender-neutral pronoun.^[69][70]

The Cantonese third-person-singular pronoun is keui⁵ (佢), and may refer to people of any gender. For a specifically female pronoun, some writers replace the person radical rén (亻) with the female radical nǚ (女), forming the character keui⁵ (他). However, this analogous variation to tā is neither widely accepted in standard written Cantonese nor grammatically or semantically required. Moreover, while the character keui⁵ (佢) has no meaning in classical Chinese, the character keui⁵ (他) has a separate meaning unrelated to its dialectic use in standard or classical Chinese.^[71]

Japanese

Pure personal pronouns used as the anaphor did not exist in traditional Japanese. In the modern Japanese, 'kare' and 'kano-jo' are thought to be the masculine and femanine third-party pronouns, respectively. Historically, however, 'kare' was a word in the demonstrative paradigm (i.e., a system involving demonstrative prefixes, ko-, so-, is-, and a-), used to point to an object that is physically far but psychologically near. The feminine counterpart 'kano-jo', on the other hand, is a combination of 'kano' (adjective version of ka-) and 'jo' (woman), coined for the translation of its Western equivalents. It was not until Meiji era that 'kare' and 'kano-jo' were commonly used as the masculine and feminine pronoun in the same way as their Western equivalents. Although their usage as the Western equivalent pronouns tends to be infrequent, 'kare' and 'kano-jo' are commonly used today as ways of saying 'girlfriend' and 'boyfriend'.^[72]

First-person pronouns, 'ore', 'boku', and 'atashi', while not explicitly carrying gender, can strongly imply gender based on the inherent levels of politeness/formality as well as hierarchical connotation.^[73] While 'boku' and 'ore' are traditionally known to be masculine pronouns and 'atashi' is characterized as feminine,^[74] 'boku' is considered to be less masculine to its 'ore' counterpart and often denotes a softer form of masculinity. It is often used by girls who find the pronoun 'atashi' as being too feminine. In order to denote a sense of authority, males will tend to resort to 'ore' to display a sense of confidence to their peers.^[73]

Korean

The Korean pronoun geu (그) is somewhat gender-neutral, as while the gender-specific pronoun geunyeo (그녀) is often the preferred pronoun when referring to feminine nouns, geu can refer to masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns. ^[75]

Turkish

Turkish does not have a system of grammatical gender and thus does not have any gender-specific pronouns. The Turkish singular third-person pronoun o (he/she/it) is completely gender-neutral and can be used to refer to masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns. The plural third-person pronoun onlar (they) is used the same way.

Turkish is also a null-subject language which means pronouns can usually be dropped while retaining the meaning of the sentence. For example, the sentences "O geldi okuldan," and "Geldi okuldan," both translate to "He/she/it came from school."

Afro-Asiatic languages

In most Afro-Asiatic languages only the first-person pronouns (singular and plural) are gender-inclusive: second and third person pronouns are gender-specific.

Thai

Thai pronouns are numerous. Here is only a short list.

	First person	Second person	Third person
Masculine	ผม (phom)	นาย (nai) (informal)	หมอนั่น (mhor nun) (derogative)
Feminine	ดิฉัน (di chan) ชั้น (chan)		นางนั่น (nang nun) (derogative)
Neuter	ฉัน (chan) เรา (rao)	คุณ (khun) เธอ (ther)	เขา (khao)

The pronoun เธอ (ther, lit: you) is semi-feminine. It can be used when the speaker or the listener (or both) are female. It is seldom used when both parties are male.

Esperanto

Esperanto has no universally accepted gender-neutral pronouns, but there are several proposals. Zamenhof proposed using the pronoun ĝi (literally "it"). Some writers also use other established pronouns like tiu ("this" or "that") or oni ("one"). Still other writers use neologisms such as ŝli for this purpose.

See also

• Epicenism
• Gender marking in job titles
• Gender-neutral language
• Gender neutrality in English
• Gender-neutrality in genderless languages
• Gender-neutrality in languages with grammatical gender
• Grammatical gender
• He
• She
• Singular they
• Spivak pronoun

Notes

• Susanne Wagner (22 July 2004). "Gender in English pronouns: Myth and reality" (PDF). Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg. 

External links

• Gender-Neutral Pronouns, a style guide
• Gender-free Legal Writing
• The Epicene Pronouns: A Chronology of the Word That Failed (link updated 5-31-06)
• Bennett, Jessica (January 31, 2016). "She? Ze? They? What’s In a Gender Pronoun". New York Times. 
• 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.
• FGA: "xe", "xem", and "xyr" are sex-neutral pronouns and adjectives
• The dictionary definition of Appendix:English third-person singular pronouns at Wiktionary

English gender-neutral pronouns generic he it one who singular they Neologisms Spivak pronouns sie/hir thon ve xe ze

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