Gender-neutral pronoun
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Gender-neutral or epicene pronouns are pronouns that neither reveal nor imply the gender or the sex of a person or thing being referred to.
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English
In English, the only gender-specific pronouns are in the third-person singular: he, him, himself, his, she, her, herself, and hers. The third-person plural pronouns they, them, themselves, their, and theirs work equally well for either sex.
When a speaker does not know or does not want to specify a person's sex, this can be a problem. Common solutions include singular they, generic he, circumlocutions such as he or she, using he and she in alternate passages, and rewording sentences to avoid pronouns. (See pronoun game and [1] (http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_for_gender-neutral_pronouns).)
There were two gender neutral pronouns native to English, 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 fourteenth-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.
The dialectal epicene pronoun a is a reduced form of the Old and Middle English masculine and feminine pronouns he and heo. By the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the masculine and feminine pronouns had developed 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....
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. source (http://www.aetherlumina.com/gnp/history.html#native)
The following sets of neologisms have their own articles, though they are all rare and most commentators do not believe any of them will become widespread:
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is often interpreted by non-linguists to mean that people will be less sexist if they don't distinguish gender in pronouns or other aspects of speech. However, patriarchal societies that speak genderless languages, such as the Chinese, demonstrate that things can't be so simple.
Other languages
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. Sometimes in writing 他/她 is even used to mean "he/she", but many stylists consider this to be unnecessarily cumbersome.
Both pronouns are pronounced identically; the difference appears only in writing.
Esperanto
Standard Esperanto has the third-person pronouns ŝi, li, and ĝi for she, he, and it, s/he, respectively. An epicene pronoun ri has been proposed, but has been no more successful than similar proposals for English.
Finnish
Like other Finno-Ugric languages, Finnish pronouns make no distinction between male and female. The Finnish third-person singular personal pronoun (he/she) is hän. In colloquial use this is often replaced with se (literally meaning 'it'), as hän is perceived as overly formal.
French
The French singular indefinite pronoun on, like English one, makes no reference to gender. It commonly means "we", however, and the gendered pronouns elle, il, and lui are ubiquitous in speech.
Japanese
Written Japanese underwent a transition similar to Chinese when an archaic demonstrative kare (彼) was resurrected to translate the "he" of European languages, while a word kanojo (彼女) was invented to translate "she". In the spoken language, the words carry the connotation of boyfriend and girlfriend respectively. Japanese does not have third-person personal pronouns, with either names, titles, or phrases such as ano hito (that person) used instead.
Románico
Standard Románico has the third-person pronouns ili ("he"), eli ("she"), li ("it", including objects and animals), and the epicene pronoun uli, which refers only to people.
Swedish
In some dialects of the Swedish language there is a word hän that means either han (him) or hon (her). It has spread to hacker slang.
See also
External links
- Gender-Neutral Pronouns (http://www.quinion.com/words/articles/genpr.htm) - a style guide
- Gender Neutral Pronoun Frequently Asked Questions (http://www.aetherlumina.com/gnp/)
- Gender-free Legal Writing (http://www.bcli.org/pages/projects/genderfree/genderfree.html)
- The Epicene Pronouns: A Chronology of the Word That Failed (http://www2.english.uiuc.edu/baron/essays/epicene.htm)
- On the Creation of "She " in Japanese (http://www.japanlink.co.jp/ol/she.html)
- Footnotes: pronouns (http://footnotes.jinkies.org.uk/pronouns.html)
- "Riismo" in Esperanto (http://rano.org/riismo2.html) (in Esperanto)eo:Ri