Information about Gender Neutral Pronoun

Gender-neutral, gender-inclusive or epicene pronouns are pronouns that neither reveal nor imply the gender or the sex of a person. Androgynous pronouns are pronouns that can refer to neither or both genders.

All 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.^[1] In such languages, all pronouns are "gender-neutral".

In some languages — notably most Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic and Niger-Congo languages — some personal pronouns intrinsically distinguish male from female; and the selection of a pronoun necessarily specifies at least to some extent the gender of what is referred to. Most such languages only distinguish gender in the third person. Outside the Afro-Asiatic family (where it is normal to have gender distinctions in at least the second person, as in Arabic and Hausa) there are only a handful of languages with gender distinctions in other persons. Since at least 1795,^[2] some people have felt this requirement to be unsatisfactory (see Gender-neutral language) and there have been attempts to devise sets of pronouns which do not require the speaker to make the distinction, since sometime around 1850.^[3] These are what is usually meant by gender-neutral pronouns.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is often interpreted to mean that people will be less sexist if they do not distinguish gender in pronouns or other aspects of speech. Patriarchal societies with genderless languages, such as the Chinese, demonstrate that gendered pronouns are not a prerequisite for inequality to exist.

Gender markedness

Further information: Markedness

Traditionally, the masculine form has been taken to be the unmarked 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 French: Vos parents, sont-ils arrivés ? ('Your parents, have they arrived?')

It is this property which has mostly led to the call for gender-neutral pronouns: the fact that the masculine form is used both for masculine referents, and also for those where the gender is unknown, irrelevant, or mixed.

English

English grammar series
English grammar Disputes in English grammar English verbs Conjugation tables English irregular verbs English modal auxiliary verb English passive voice English declension English personal pronouns English plural English compound English honorifics English relative clauses Gender in English
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In English:

• The gender-specific pronouns are the personal pronouns of the third-person singular: 'he'/'him'/'himself'/'his' (for male persons or possessors), 'she'/'her'/'herself'/'hers' (for female persons or possessors), and 'it'/'itself'/'its' (for neither).
• The third-person plural pronouns 'they', 'them', 'themselves', 'their', and 'theirs' work equally well for either sex and are androgynous.

A speaker may not know or may want to avoid specifying a person's gender. Traditionally, when one wishes to refer to a single definite person androgynously with a pronoun in the third person, the masculine pronoun is used. Some people have begun to challenge this tradition, however, usually by resorting to plural pronouns such as 'they', 'them' and 'their' for singular uses. This is called the singular 'they'.

Other common solutions include the generic 'she', 'one', the generic 'you', circumlocutions such as 'he or she', or using 'he' and 'she' in alternate passages, and rewording sentences to avoid pronouns. (See pronoun game.)

Gender-neutral pronouns used in 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 Baron's Grammar and Gender:

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". By the 12th and 13th centuries, these had often weakened to a point where, according to the OED, they were "almost or wholly indistinguishable in pronunciation." The modern feminine pronoun she, which first appears in the mid twelfth century, seems to have been drafted at least partly to reduce the increasing ambiguity of the pronoun system…^[4]

Baron goes on to describe how relics of these sex-neutral terms survive in some British dialects of Modern English, and sometimes a pronoun of one gender might be applied to a person or animal of the opposite gender.

Neologisms

Some groups and individuals have used non-standard pronouns, hoping they will become the standards. Various proposals for such changes have been around since at least the 19th century. The American Heritage Book of English Usage says of these efforts:

Like most efforts at language reform, these well-intended suggestions have been largely ignored by the general English-speaking public, and the project to supplement the English pronoun system has proved to be an ongoing exercise in futility. Pronouns are one of the most basic components of a language, and most speakers appear to have little interest in adopting invented ones. This may be because in most situations people can get by using the plural pronoun they or using other constructions that combine existing pronouns, such as he/she or 'he or she'.^[5]

Here are the third person singular personal pronouns in English: he, she, it; also the indefinite personal pronoun one and "singular" they. Below them are examples of the better known neologisms.

	Nominative (subject)	Accusative (object)	Possessive adjective	Possessive pronoun	Reflexive
He	He laughed	I called him	His head hurts	I am his	He feeds himself
She	She laughed	I called her	Her head hurts	I am hers	She feeds herself
It	It laughed	I called it	Its head hurts	I am its	It feeds itself
One	One laughed	I called one	One's head hurts	I am one's	One feeds oneself
Singular they	They laughed	I called them	Their head hurts	I am theirs	They feed themself/themselves
Spivak (new)	Ey laughed	I called em	Eir head hurts	I am eirs	E feeds emself
Spivak (old)	E laughed	I called em	Eir head hurts	I am eirs	E feeds eirself
S/he	S/he laughed	I called him/her	His/her head hurts	I am his/hers	S/he feeds him/herself
Sie and hir[6]	Sie laughed	I called hir	Hir head hurts	I am hirs	Sie feeds hirself
Xe[7]	laughed	I called	head hurts	I am	Xe feeds ''
Ve[8]	Ve laughed	I called ver	Vis head hurts	I am vis	Ve feeds verself
Ze and mer[9]	Ze laughed	I called mer	Zer head hurts	I am zer	Ze feeds zemself
Ze and hir[10]	Ze laughed	I called hir	Hir head hurts	I am hirs	Ze feeds hirself
Zie	Zie laughed	I called zir	Zir head hurts	I am zirs	Zie feeds zirself
E	E laughed	I called het	Het head hurts	I am hets	E feeds hetself
Thon[11]	Thon laughed	I called thon	Thons head hurts	I am thon's	Thon feeds thonself

The gender-neutral pronoun "co" is used in contemporary everyday language by the 100 people who live at Twin Oaks Community in Virginia, USA. It is used to mean "s/he" in the case in which the gender is not known or is irrelevant.^[12]

Traditionally gender-neutral languages

Bengali

Despite the fact that it possesses a very large and complex pronominal system, Standard Bengali 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).

Chinese

In modern Chinese, there is no gender distinction in pronouns in the spoken language: the pronoun 他 (tā) means 'he' or 'she'. However, around the time of the May Fourth Movement, a new written form 她 of the pronoun was created to specifically represent 'she', and 他 is now often restricted to meaning 'he'. This language reform was part of a 'modernisation' movement, and copied from European languages. In writing, 他/她 is used to mean 'he'/'she' (in that order), 它 (tā) to mean 'it', 牠 (tā) to refer to animals and 祂 (tā) to denote God. These pronouns are pronounced identically; the difference appears only in writing.

The Cantonese third person singular pronoun is keui⁵. In written Cantonese, the character most commonly used to record this is ; it may be used to refer to people of either gender. The practice of replacing the "亻" radical with "女" (forming the character ) 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 佢, the character 姖 has a separate meaning in standard Chinese.^[13]

Filipino

The national language of the Philippines only has gender neutral pronouns; siya (he/she) is used for both genders and occasionally animals. The pronoun ito (it) is used for objects.

Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian

Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian are Finno-Ugric (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 and nemad in Estonian and ő and ők in Hungarian, respectively, which always refer to persons or animals.

Georgian

Georgian, a South Caucasian language, has gender-neutral pronouns.

Korean

Before modernization, in Korean 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'. 그것 (geu-geot) means 'it'.

Sometimes geu-nyeo means more than 'she' as pronoun, because the word geu is also used to show definiteness, like the article 'the' in English.

Nahuatl

In Nahuatl all pronouns and pronoun affixes are independent of gender.

Persian

The Persian language has no trace of grammatical gender: 'he',' she', and 'it' are all expressed by the same pronoun u. This lack of specification has allowed for fluidity in reading the gender of both human lovers and the divine beloved in Persian poetry.

Turkish

All Turkish 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.

Romance languages

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 sa for a feminine object, and son for a masculine object: son livre means 'his or her book', where son is used because livre is masculine. Non-possessive pronouns, on the other hand, are usually gender-specific. See also Gender-neutrality in languages with grammatical gender.

Notes

See also

• Epicene
• Gender-neutrality in languages without grammatical gender
• Gender-neutral language
• Gender role
• Gender-specific pronoun
• Generic antecedents
• Grammatical gender

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)
• On the Creation of "She " in Japanese
• Footnotes: pronouns (Archived by Wayback Machine Mar 08, 2005)
• "Riismo" in Esperanto (in Esperanto)
• Regender can translate webpages to use gender-neutral pronouns.
• Is there a gender-neutral substitute for "his or her"?
• http://usingenglish.com/forum/general-language-discussions/45891-modest-proposal-pronouns.html

English gender-neutral pronouns
He • She • It • One • Singular they • Spivak
neologisms: sie/hir, thon, ve, xe, ze, …

Epicene is an adjective (sometimes substantive) for loss of gender distinction, often specific loss of masculinity. It includes:

• effeminacy — a male with female characteristics,
• androgyny — having both male and female characteristics, or

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In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun or noun phrase with or without a determiner, such as you and they in English. The replaced phrase is the antecedent of the pronoun.
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Gender", in common usage, refers to the differences between men and women. Encyclopaedia Britannica notes that gender identity is "an individual's self-conception as being male or female, as distinguished from actual biological sex.
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Sex refers to the male and female duality of biology and reproduction. Unlike organisms that only have the ability to reproduce asexually, sexed male and female pairs have the ability to produce offspring through meiosis and fertilization.
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In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun or noun phrase with or without a determiner, such as you and they in English. The replaced phrase is the antecedent of the pronoun.
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Gender", in common usage, refers to the differences between men and women. Encyclopaedia Britannica notes that gender identity is "an individual's self-conception as being male or female, as distinguished from actual biological sex.
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Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects ^[1], including most of the major languages of Europe, the northern Indian subcontinent (South Asia), the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), and much of Central Asia.
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Afro-Asiatic languages constitute a language family (Languages of Africa) with about 375 languages (SIL estimate) and more than 300 million speakers spread throughout North Africa, East Africa, West Africa, Central Africa, and Southwest Asia (including some 200 million speakers of
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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.
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al-‘Arabiyyah in written Arabic (Kufic script):  
Pronunciation: /alˌʕa.raˈbij.ja/
Spoken in: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman,
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Hausa}}} 
Official status
Official language of: Northern States of Nigeria
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: ha
ISO 639-2: hau
ISO 639-3: hau

Hausa
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Gender-neutral language is a description of language usages which are aimed at minimizing assumptions regarding the biological sex of human referents.

The advocacy of gender-neutral language reflects at least two different agenda:

• One aims to clarify the

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Sexism is commonly considered to be discrimination and/or hatred against people based on their sex rather than their individual merits, but can also refer to any and all systemic differentiations based on the sex of the individuals.
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Patriarchy describes the structuring of society on the basis of family units, in which fathers have primary responsibility for the welfare of these units, such as a family. In some cultures slaves were included as part of such households.
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Chinese or the Sinitic language(s) (汉语/漢語, Pinyin: Hànyǔ; 华语/華語, Huáyǔ; or 中文, Zhōngwén) can be considered a language or language family.
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Markedness is a linguistic concept that developed out of the Prague School (also known as the Prague linguistic circle).

A marked form is a non-basic or less natural form. An unmarked form is a basic, default form.
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French (français, pronounced [fʁɑ̃ˈsɛ]) is a Romance language originally spoken in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Switzerland, and today by about 300 million people around the world as either
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English}}} 
Writing system: Latin (English variant) 
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ISO 639-2: eng
ISO 639-3: eng  
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To write is to learn.

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Old English Middle English Modern English
Nominative hwā who who
Accusative hwone / hwæne whom who / whom¹
Dative hwām / hwǣm
Instrumental
Genitive hwæs whos whose

¹
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personal pronouns of English can have various forms according to gender, number, person, and case. Modern English is a language with very little inflection, to the point where some authors describe it as analytic, but its system of personal pronouns has preserved part of the
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