Third-person pronoun

A third-person pronoun is a pronoun that refers to an entity other than the speaker or listener. The English pronouns he and she are gender-specific third-person personal pronouns. The English pronoun they is an epicene (gender-neutral) third-person pronoun that can refer to plural antecedents of any gender and, under certain circumstances, to a singular antecedent that refers to a male or female (but not inanimate) entity.^[1]

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 (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 was traditionally used with a purported gender-neutral meaning; such use of "he" was also common in English until the latter half of the 20th century but some regard it as outmoded^[2] or sexist.^[3] Use of singular they is another common alternative, but is not universally accepted and regarded by some to be grammatically incorrect.^[4]

Pronouns such as who and which are not discussed here, though similar but different consideration may apply to them.

Grammar patterns

Some languages of the world (including Austronesian languages, many East Asian languages, the Quechuan languages, and the Uralic languages^[5]) 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.^[6] 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's 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 (for plurals) 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.^[7] This collective masculine is also the case in ancient languages, like Classical Greek and Biblical Hebrew and have influenced the modern forms. 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).

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.^[8]

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). The third-person plural they and its inflected and derived forms (them, their, themselves, etc.) are gender-neutral and also used to refer singular, personal antecedents (e.g. "Where a recipient of an allowance under section 4 absents themself from Canada, payment of the allowance shall ..."^[9])

Generally speaking, he refers to males, and she refers to females. He and she are normally used for humans; use of it can be dehumanizing, and thus inappropriate, but it is sometimes used for a baby when there is no antecedent like son or daughter and its sex is irrelevant or distracting. It is normally used for animals, but he or she can be used for an animal when the speaker wants to indicate its sex and there is a higher degree of empathy with the animal, as is more likely with pets, domesticated animals, and other "higher" animals, such as elephants. He or she is used for an animal that is referred to by a proper name (e.g. "Fido adores his blanket".).^[10]

She is sometimes used for ships, and may also be used for other inanimates, such as cars. She is also used as an alternative to it for countries, when viewed as political entities.^[10]

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.^[11] According to Dennis Baron's Grammar and Gender:^[12]

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.^[13]

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.^[14][15]

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.^[16] 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.^[16]

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.^[16] Quirk et al. give the following example:

• A child learns to speak the language of its environment.^[16]

According to The Handbook of Non-Sexist Writing, it is sometimes the "obvious" choice for children.^[17] 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 ...^[18]

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."^[19] An early example of prescribing the use of he to refer to a person of unknown gender is Anne Fisher's 1745 grammar book "A New Grammar".^[20] Older editions of Fowler also took this view.^[21]

• The customer brought his purchases to the cashier for checkout.
• In a supermarket, a customer 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,^[22] such use may also be considered to be a violation of gender agreement.^[23]:48

It has also been seen as prejudicial by some,^[23] 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.^[23]: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.^[24]

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^[25]

"... 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^[25]

"... 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)^[25]

• 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".^[26] 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);^[27] as quoted by Miller and Swift.^[23]: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:^[23]

• 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".^[23]

Singular they

Since at least the 14th century, they (including derivatives and inflected forms, such as them, their, theirs, themselves, and themself) has been used, with varying degrees of general acceptance, to refer to a singular antecedent.^[28] This usage is often called the singular they. Today, it is unexceptional and often not regarded as incorrect, especially in informal language.^[28][29]

• 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)^[30]

Though the "singular they" has a singular antecedent, it is used with a plural verb form.^[31]

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:^[32]

• '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

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.^[33] The 19th and 20th centuries saw an upsurge in consciousness and advocacy of gender equality, 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",^[34] "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

Various proposals for the use of non-standard pronouns have been introduced since at least the 19th century.

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^[35]):

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.^[36]

"Co" was coined by feminist writer Mary Orovan in 1970.^[37] "Co" is in common usage in intentional communities of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities,^[38] and "co" appears in the bylaws of several of these communities.^{[39][40][41][42]} 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.^[43]

Various variants of ze have been proposed, with different object forms, to meet the need of unspecified gender situations and transgender persons.^[44] Kate Bornstein, an American transgender author, used the pronoun forms ze and hir in the book "Nearly Roadkill: an Infobahn erotic adventure" in 1996.^[45]

Transgender pronouns

For people who are transgender, style guides and associations of journalists and health professionals advise use of the pronoun preferred or considered appropriate by the person in question.^[46][47][48] When dealing with clients or patients, health practitioners are advised to take note of the pronouns used by the individuals themselves,^[49] which may involve using different pronouns at different times.^[50][51] This is also extended to the name preferred by the person concerned.^[52][53] LGBTQ advocacy groups also advise using the pronouns and names preferred or considered appropriate by the person concerned.^[54] They further recommend avoiding gender confusion when referring to the background of transgender people,^[55] such as using "Private Manning"^[56] to avoid a male pronoun or name.

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
It	It is laughing	I called it	Its eyes gleam	That is its	It likes itself
One	One is laughing	I called one	One's eyes gleam	That is one's	One likes oneself
They	They are laughing	I called them	Their eyes gleam	That is theirs	They like themselves
Conventions based on traditional pronouns
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
E: (Spivak, 1983)[57][58]	E is laughing	I called Em	Eir eyes gleam	That is Eirs	E likes Emself
Ey: (Elverson, 1975)[59]	Ey is laughing	I called em	Eir eyes gleam	That is eirs	Ey likes eirself
Hu: (Humanist, 1982)[60]	Hu is laughing	I called hum	Hus eyes gleam	That is hus	Hu likes humself
Peh: (Dicebox, 2012?)[61][62]	Peh is laughing	I called pehm	Peh's eyes gleam	That is peh's	Peh likes pehself
Per: (Piercy, 1979)[63]	Per is laughing	I called per	Per eyes gleam	That is pers	Per likes perself
Thon: (Converse, 1884)[64]	Thon is laughing	I called thon	Thons eyes gleam	That is thons	Thon likes thonself
Ve: (Hulme, c. 1980)[65]	Ve is laughing	I called ver	Vis eyes gleam	That is vis	Ve likes verself
Xe: (Rickter, c. 1973)[66]	Xe is laughing	I called xem	Xyr eyes gleam	That is xyrs	Xe likes xemself
Yo: (regional, c. 2004)[67][68]	Yo is laughing	I called yo	—	—	?
Ze, hir: (Bornstein, n.d.)[69]	Ze (Zie, Sie) is laughing	I called hir	Hir eyes gleam	That is hirs	Ze (Zie, SIe) likes hirself
Ze, mer: (Creel, 1997)[70]	Ze is laughing	I called mer	Zer eyes gleam	That is zers	Ze likes zemself
Ze, zir: (unknown, c. 2013)[71]	Ze (Zie, Sie) is laughing	I called zir/zem	Zir/Zes eyes gleam	That is zirs/zes	Ze (Zie, Sie) likes zirself/zemself
Zhe: (Foldvary, 2000)[72]	Zhe is laughing	I called zhim	Zher eyes gleam	That is zhers	Zhe likes zhimself

Indo-European languages

In most Indo-European languages (though not in Armenian and 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 (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 of "they". This is also the case in Greek, 3rd person masc. αυτός/αυτοί and fem. αυτή/αυτές. It is traditional in most languages, in cases of mixed or indeterminate gender, to use the masculine as a default. German differs from the rest, as the feminine form sie is used also as plural for all genders.

Romance languages

For example, in French,

• First person singular je ('I'), me, moi ('me')
• Second person singular (familiar) tu, te, toi ('you')
• Third person indefinite on ('one', 'you')
• First person plural nous ('we', 'us')
• Second person plural vous ('you')
• Third person possessives leur ('their') and son/sa/ses (depending on the gender and number of the item possessed), '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 ('the' masculine-gender), ils ('they', referring to an all-male or mixed-gender group) are all masculine.
• Third person pronouns elle ('she'), la ('the' feminine-gender) 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.

Catalan

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

Portuguese works with two sets of pronouns. One of them (seu/teu for masculine and sua/tua 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. Portuguese can use se and 3rd person plural without subject as in Spanish, to express indefinite/impersonal sense.

There is also an attempt to use "x" or "@" in binary terminations, but it only works in written language. Coming up then likely alternatives that would be "elu", "el/els" and other possibilities like "ili" and "ilu". The vowels "i", "u" and "e" are usually the most neutral or hybrid vowels of the Portuguese language. For exemple: menine, garoti, sue, minhe, pãe, lindu.

Italian

Italian is similar to French, with phrases such as il mio/tuo/suo libro not implying anything about the owner's gender 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 portò su le valigie di lei (He 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.

Spanish

In contrast, Spanish possessive pronouns agree with neither the gender of the possessor nor that of the possession (but they do agree with number of the possession), except in the construct with de: de él, de ella ("of his, of hers"). In the third person, the possessive pronoun su(s) 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 referring to people (or any noun) in Spanish have gender – él for "him" and ella for "her". Only when referring to an indefinite antecedent is the neuter ello used, and since Spanish is a pro-drop language, it usually only appears in prepositional phrases, like para ello, "for it". Grammatical person is inflected in verbs, so subject pronouns are generally used when necessary to make a distinction or add emphasis. For example, the verb vivir ("to live") may be conjugated in the third person as vive ("he/she/it lives") and be a complete sentence on its own. 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". If it is absolutely necessary to provide a subject when referring to an unnamed object, a demonstrative can be used instead of a pronoun: ¿Qué es eso? ("What is that?"). An acceptable 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.

However, when the pronoun is used as a direct object, gender-specific forms reappear in Spanish. The sentence "I can't find it", when referring to the masculine noun libro (book) would be "No lo encuentro", whereas if the thing being looked for were a magazine (revista in Spanish, which is feminine) then the sentence would be "No la encuentro".

When expressing indefinite/impersonal sense, hence no known gender, there are several ways in Spanish: 3rd person singular se and sometimes uno can express "one"/"you" in the general sense, "No se sabe" ("You don't know"). Another way is by omitting the pronoun in 3rd person plural to say "they", in the sense of "you" but exclusive "En Francia hablan francés" ("In France they speak French"), and 2nd person singular, tú ("you") as in "debes creer en ti mismo" ("one shall believe in oneself"). In instructions, like cooking recipes, one can see 3rd person plural with se, or 1st person plural.

The Spanish language presents difficulties to gender neutral writing also due to strong congruence (agreement) with gender for adjectives like bueno ("good") and nouns, e.g. for professions panadero("baker"), which signal masculine gender and using the other available form would signal exclusively feminine.

Germanic languages

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 ('she') and han ('he'). 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. Amongst LGBT interest groups the use of the word 'hen' after the Swedish implementation in 2010 is now in use ^[73]

Swedish

The Swedish language has 4 grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, reale and neutral , which correspond to the 3rd person forms han, hon, den, det ("he, she, it, it"). The other forms are gender neutral: singular 1st jag, 2nd du, 3rd indefinite/impersonal man, plural 1st vi, 2nd ni, 3rd de. Neutral is characterised by the ending '-t' in most forms, meanwhile the rest may en with '-n'. For people and known animals the masculine or feminine are used. There is no way to make gender distinction in plural.

In Swedish, the word hen was introduced generally in the 2000s 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 proposed by Rolf Dunås in 1966, and could be used occasionally, like in a guideline from the Swedish building council from 1980, authored by Rolf Reimers. Its origin may have been a combination of han and hon.

It was proposed again in 1994, with reference to the Finnish hän, similarly pronounced, a personal pronoun that is gender-neutral, since Finnish completely lacks grammatical gender. In 2009 it was included in Nationalencyklopedin. However, it did not receive widespread recognition until around 2010, when it began to be used in some texts, and provoked some media debates and controversy, but is included since 2015 in Svenska Akademiens ordlista, the most authoritative glossary of the Swedish language, by the Swedish Academy.^[74]

As of 2016 Swedish manuals of style treat "hen" as a neologism. Major newspapers like Dagens Nyheter have recommended against its usage, though some 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. Its entry will cover two definitions: as a reference to individual's belonging to an unspecified sex or third gender, or where the sex is not known.

Traditionally, Swedish offers other ways of avoiding using gender-specific pronouns; e.g., "vederbörande" ("the referred person") and "man" ("one", as in "Man borde..."/"One should...") with its objective form "en" or alternatively "en" as both subjective and objective since "man"/"one" sounds the same as "man"/"male adult" although they are discernible through syntax. "Denne" ("this one") may be used to refer to a non-gender-specific referent already or soon-to-be mentioned ("Vederbörande kan, om denne så vill,..."/"The referent may, if they wish,..."). One method is rewriting into the plural, as Swedish - like English - has only gender-neutral pronouns in the plural. Another method is writing the pronoun in the referent's grammatical gender ("Barnet får om det vill."/"The child is allowed to, if it wants to." The word "barn" is grammatically neuter, thus the use of the third-person neuter pronoun "det"); some nouns retain their traditional pronouns, e.g., "man"/"man" uses "han"/"he", "kvinna"/"woman" uses "hon"/"she", and "människa"/"human being" uses "hon"/"she". While grammatically correct, using "den/det" to refer to human beings may sound as if the speaker regards the referenced human beings as objects.

German

The German language uses 3 genders: masculine, feminine and neutral. These are distinguished only in 3rd person singular, together with indefinite man ("one", "you"). German is special as it uses the feminine form sie both for basically all plurals, and for formal address Sie ("you" sing./plur.).

Singular: 1st: ich, 2nd: du, 3rd: er, sie, es

Plural: 1st: wir, 2nd: ihr, 3rd: sie, Sie

Other Indo-European languages

Armenian

Armenian does not distinguish gender, the word նա (na) meaning both 'he' and 'she'. For inanimate or inhuman words, the demonstratives are used.

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.^[75]

Welsh

Singular personal pronouns are gender-specific (hi, "she"; e,ef,fe,fo,o, "he"). It translates as he or she according to the grammatical gender of the referent noun. However, when it translates an intangible referent, hi (she) is used.^[76] The singular possessive pronoun ei is the same word for both genders, but in some instances it mutates the following word differently depending on whether it means "his" or "her".

• Bydd hi'n rhy hwyr erbyn 'ny, It will be too late by then;
• ei modryb, her aunt; ei fodryb, his aunt; but
• ei nith, his or her niece.

There has been a little use of "hw" (from "hwythau") as a gender-neutral singular pronoun for use with people, using nasal mutations and the addition of "h" for words beginning with vowels following the possessive "ei".

• "ei nghath hw", their cat; but
• "ei horen", her or their orange.

Other languages

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.

Asian languages

Chinese

Written Chinese has gone in the opposite direction, from non-gendered to gendered pronouns, though this has not 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.^[77] 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)."^[78]

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.^[77] 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.^[78] 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.^[79][80]

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 (姖). 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 (姖) has a separate meaning unrelated to its dialectic use in standard or classical Chinese.^[81]

Korean

There are no pure gender specific third-person pronouns in Korean. In translation or in creative writing in the modern Korean, the coined term 그녀 "geu-nyeo" (그 "geu", a demonstrative meaning 'that' and 녀 "nyeo", derivative of a Chinese character 女 'woman') is used to refer to a third-person female and 그 "geu" (originally a demonstrative) is used to refer to either a male third person or sometimes a neutral gender.

Japanese

Just like Korean, pure personal pronouns used as the anaphor did not exist in traditional Japanese. Most of the time the language drops the pronoun completely or refers to people using their name with gender neutral suffix -san added to it.

For example, "Ms. Saito came" would be "Saito-san kimashita".

In the modern Japanese, kare (彼) is the male and kanojo (彼女) the female third-person pronouns. Historically, 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 kanojo, 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 the Meiji period that kare and kanojo 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—because pronouns are dropped at the first place—ka-reshi and kanojo are commonly used today to mean "girlfriend" and "boyfriend".^[82]

First-person pronouns, ore, boku, and watashi, while not explicitly carrying gender, can strongly imply gender based on the inherent levels of politeness/formality as well as hierarchical connotation.^[83] While boku and ore are traditionally known to be masculine pronouns and atashi is characterized as feminine,^[84] boku is considered to be less masculine than ore and often denotes a softer form of masculinity. It is often used by girls who find the pronoun atashi too feminine. To denote a sense of authority, males will tend to resort to ore to display a sense of confidence to their peers.^[83]

Turkish

Turkish does not have a system of grammatical gender and 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 okuldan geldi." and "Okuldan geldi." both translate to "He/she/it came from school."

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)	มัน (man), เขา (khao), แก (kae), ท่าน (than)

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.

The third neuter pronouns are used differently. มัน (man) is often used to refer to inanimate objects and non-human animate beings. However, this pronoun can also be used to refer to people in informal situations (e.g., a mother speaking about her child, or a person speaking about a close friend). The pronouns เขา (khao), แก (kae), and ท่าน (than) are often used in formal situations—with the latter being the most formal and แก (kae) being used to refer to a person older than the speaker.

These three pronouns can also be used to refer to a different grammatical person. เขา (khao) can be used in the first person, while แก (kae) and ท่าน (than) can be used in the second person.

Austronesian languages

Rapa

Old Rapa is the indigenous language of Rapa Iti, an island of French Polynesia located within the Bass Islands archipelago. Old Rapa itself does not have a pronominal system that consists of any gender - specific pronouns. However, similar to many other languages within the Polynesian language family, it contains singular, dual, and plural pronouns. These pronouns of Old Rapa also define the degree of clusivity in the first person dual and the first person plural forms.

In the first person tense -as depicted in the table below- Old Rapa contains pronouns that are exclusive first person singular (ou - free; ku - bound), however does not contain pronouns that are inclusive first person singular. Old Rapa also consists of pronouns to describe both the exclusive and inclusive first person dual and first person plural forms. By definition, exclusive pronouns are pronouns that include the speaker and one or more others, although does not include the person being addressed. Inclusive pronouns are pronouns that work in the opposite fashion, by including the speaker and the addressee, and potentially more others.

Pronouns in Old Rapa^[85]

	Singular (Free)	Singular (Bound)	Dual	Plural
First Person Exclusive	ou	ku	māua	mātou
First Person Inclusive			tāua	tātou
Second Person	koe		kōrua	koutou
Third Person	'ōna,koia	na	rāua	rātou

For both the second and third person tense, Old Rapa contains pronouns that describe second person singular (however devoiding a distinction for bound words), second person dual, and second person plural. It also consists of unique pronouns for the third person singular, third person dual, and third person plural forms.^[85]

When referring to possessive indicators on pronouns, the Old Rapa language adheres closely to the same pronominal system. There exists possessive pronouns for each case: inclusive first person singular, first person dual, and first person plural; exclusive first person singular, first person dual, and first person plural; second person singular, second person dual, and second person plural; and third person singular, third person dual, and third person plural.^[86]

The possessive pronouns of Old Rapa are constructed following three morphemes:

“the indefinite article (te) + the possessive marker (a/o) + pronoun”^[87]

Possessive Pronouns in Old Rapa^[86]

		Singular		Dual		Plural
First Person	Inclusive	tōku	tāku	tō māua	tā māua	tō mātou	tā mātou
	Exclusive	~~~	~~~	tō tāua	tā tāua	tō tātou	tā tātou
Second Person		tōkoe	tākoe	tō kōrua	tā kōrua	tō koutou	tā koutou
Third Person		tōna	tāna	tō rāua	tā rāua	tō rātou	tā rātou

However, when spoken, both the indefinite article and possessive markers are put together into what is known as its portmanteau form (tō/tā). As is evident in the following table presenting the Possessive Pronouns of Old Rapa, the all singular, dual, and plural forms adopt the distinction between inalienable objects. When speaking in either the first person singular and third person singular modes, the bond forms of the initial pronouns are used.

Example:

tō-ku 'are INDEF.PossO-1S house 'my house'

tā-na tāne INDEF.PossA-3S man 'her husband'

Example of First Person Exclusive Singular (Bound) and Third Person Singular (Free) sentence structure.

• e pohehae ’ōna i a-ku
  • e (Imperfective aspect) + pohehae (Jealous) + ’ōna (Third Person Pronoun creating the 'She') + i (Preposition) + a-ku (Perlative + Singular creating the 'me')
    • 'She is jealous of me.'^[88]

Example of Second Person Singular (Free)

• kāre tā-koe puta
  • kāre (Negative Element) + tā-koe (Article + Possessive + Second Person Singular creating the 'Your') + puta (book)
    • 'You don't have your book.' (Literal translation ~ 'Your book doesn't exist')^[89]

Wuvulu-Aua

Wuvulu-Aua does not have known gender expression for pronouns. It does distinguish between singular, dual, and plural usage of pronouns. The 3rd person singular uses the same prefix as 1st and 2nd person pronouns, i. Only 1st person pronouns can be inclusive or exclusive. The plural form of pronouns originally referred to a group of three, but eventually changed to refer to three or more.^[90]

	1st Person	2nd Person	3rd Person
Singular	i-au	i-oi	i-a
Dual	ʔa-rua (inclusive) ai-rua (exclusive)	amu-rua	la-rua
Plural	ʔo-ʔolu (inclusive) ai-ʔolu (exclusive)	amu-ʔolu	ro-ʔolu

Mortlockese

The Lukunosh dialect of Mortlockese has two 3rd person pronouns. The independent forms of the 3rd person singular and plural are /ii/ and /iir/ respectively. These change forms depending on if it is used as a subject proclitic, direct object suffix, or possessive suffix.^[91]

Semitic languages

Hebrew

Hebrew makes gender distinction between masculine and feminine in 2nd and 3rd persons, both singular and plural. The masculine is collective, inclusive, but colloquially the masculine plural forms may be heard as gender-neutral. Hebrew is a pronoun dropping language, which is facilitated as the verbs are also inflected according to gender, number and person in virtually all forms of 2nd and 3rd singular and plural.

Singular - 1st person: אֲנִי (aní), 2nd: masc. אַתָּה (atá) fem. אַתְּ (at), 3rd: masc. הוּא (hu) fem. הִיא (hi)

Plural - 1st person: אֲנַחְנוּ (anákhnu), 2nd: masc. אַתֶּם (atém) fem. אַתֶּן (atén), 3rd: masc. הֵם (hem) fem. הֵן (hen)

Uralic languages

Finnish

Finnish, as other Uralic languages, has no way to express gender with pronouns. The Finnish hän has inspired the introduction of the Swedish hen pronoun. Finnish is basically a pronoun dropping language but in 3rd person singular it is common to use pronoun explicitly. Hän/he are only used about humans, while se/ne are used about animals, inanimate things, and sometimes about people, colloquially, a bit pejorative.

Singular - 1st person: minä, 2nd: sinä, 3rd: hän/se

Plural - 1st person: me, 2nd: te, 3rd: he/ne

Same basic system applies also to closest relative of Finnish, the Estonian language.

Singular - 1st person:"mina", 2nd: "sina", 3rd: "tema" / for inanimate objects "see"

Plural - 1st person "meie", 2nd person: "teie", 3rd: "nemad" / for inanimate objects "need"

In both languages there are short and long forms to pronouns, short being just a bit more common for daily use and long being the way to put more emphasis to the pronoun but there is no way of referring to one's gender, directly or indirectly.

Hungarian

Hungarian also does not have gendered pronouns nor any other concept of linguistic gender. The third person singular pronoun for a person (or a pet) is ő.

Constructed languages

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 ri for this purpose.

Ido

Ido has gendered and gender-neutral pronouns.

Interlingua

Because Interlingua is an Italic constructed language, it shares many traits with Spanish, Italian and French.

Singular: 1st person: io, 2nd: tu, 3rd: ille, illa for humans/animals and illo for objects

Plural: 1st: nos, 2nd: vos, 3rd: illes, illas, illos as plural of above.

Third person singular on is used for indefinite "one"/"you" as in French.

See also

• Epicenism
• Gender marking in job titles
• Gender-neutrality in genderless languages
• Gender-neutrality in languages with grammatical gender
• Pronoun game
• Feminist language planning
• Lavender linguistics

Notes

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

External links

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

• 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