Gender neutrality in languages with gendered third-person pronouns

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 third-person personal pronouns specific to the gender of the person (not to be confused with grammatical gender). The English pronoun they is an epicene (gender-neutral) third-person pronoun that can refer to plural antecedents of any gender (or unknown gender) and, informally, to a singular antecedent that refers to a person of either or unknown gender, the "singular they".^[1] The singular English pronoun it implies that the antecedent has no gender, making it inappropriate in contexts where the antecedent is known to have a gender, but what that gender is is not known.

Many of the world's languages do not have gender-specific pronouns. Some languages that do have gender-specific pronouns have them as part of a grammatical gender system, where all or the vast majority of nouns are assigned to gender classes and adjectives and other modifiers must agree with them in that; but a few languages with gender-specific pronouns, such as English, Afrikaans, Defaka, Khmu, Malayalam, Tamil, and Yazgulyam, lack traditional grammatical gender and in such languages, gender usually adheres to "natural gender".^[2]

Problems of usage may arise in languages like English which have pronominal gender systems, in contexts where a person of unspecified or unknown 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 an intended gender-neutral meaning;^[3] such use of he was common in formal English between the 1700s and the latter half of the 20th century (though some regard it as outmoded^[4] or sexist^[5]). Use of singular they is another common alternative dating from the 1300s, but proscribed by some.^[6]

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

Some languages which historically did not have gendered pronouns have introduced them to translated Western literature.

Grammar patterns[]

Some languages of the world (including most Austronesian languages, many East Asian languages, the Quechuan languages, and the Uralic languages^[7]) 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.^[8] Pronouns in these languages tend to be naturally gender-neutral.^{[citation needed]}

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, even though personne as a noun ('person') is only feminine regardless of the sex of the referent. (See Grammatical gender § Grammatical gender can be realized on pronouns.) There are both direct and indirect options for nonbinary referents, although the use of some forms is contested.^[9]

Issues concerning gender and pronoun usage commonly arise in situations where it is 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 sometimes 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.^[10] 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 has persisted since the 14th century.^[11]

English[]

Standard usage[]

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 ..."^[12])

Generally speaking, he refers to males, and she refers to females. When a person has adopted a persona of a different gender (such as when acting or performing in drag), pronouns with the gender of the persona are used when referring to that apart from the usual identity of the person. Pronouns are sometimes reversed (gender transposition) in gay slang. He and she are normally used for humans; use of it can be dehumanizing^{[citation needed]}, and more importantly implies a lack of gender even if one is present, and is usually thus inappropriate. It is sometimes used for a baby when there is no antecedent such as son or daughter and its sex is irrelevant or distracting^{[citation needed]}. It is often used for non-human animals of unknown gender, despite being inaccurate, but he or she is frequently used for a non-human animal with a known gender. He or she are used for a non-human animal who is referred to by a proper name (e.g. "Fido adores his blanket".).^[13]

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.).

She is sometimes used for named ships and countries, but this may be considered old-fashioned and is in decline. In some local dialects and casual speech he and she are used for various objects and named vehicles (like a personal car). Animate objects like robots and voice assistants are often assumed to have a gender and sometimes have a name with a matching gender. (See Gender in English § Metaphorical gender.)

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.^[14][15][16] When dealing with clients or patients, health practitioners are advised to take note of the pronouns used by the individuals themselves,^[17] which may involve using different pronouns at different times.^[18][19][20] This is also extended to the name preferred by the person concerned.^[20][21][22] LGBTQ+ advocacy groups also advise using the pronouns and names preferred or considered appropriate by the person concerned.^[23] They further recommend avoiding gender confusion when referring to the background of transgender people, such as using a title or rank to avoid a gendered pronoun or name.^[24]

There is no universal agreement on a gender-neutral third-person pronoun which could be used for a person whose gender is unknown or who is a non-binary gender identity; various alternatives are described in the following sections.

It and one as gender-neutral pronouns[]

Whereas "he" and "she" are used for entities treated as people (including any entities that are being anthropomorphized), the pronoun "it" is normally used for entities not regarded as persons, though the use of "he" or "she" is optional for non-human animals of known sex^[25] (and obligatory for animals referred to by a proper name^[13]). 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.^[25]

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.^[25] Quirk et al. give the following example:

• A child learns to speak the language of its environment.^[25]

According to The Handbook of Non-Sexist Writing, it is sometimes the "obvious" choice for children.^[26] 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 ...^[27]

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 be used in conjunction with the generic he according to the preference and style of the writer.

• Each student should save his questions until the end.
• One should save one's questions until the end.
• One should save his 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 and she[]

Forms of the pronoun he were used for both males and females 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."^[28] 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.^[29] Older editions of Fowler also took this view.^[30]

• 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."
• "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,^[31] such use may also be considered to be a violation of gender agreement.^[32]:48

The generic he has increasingly 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. The usage of generic he has declined in favor of other alternatives.

It has also been seen as prejudicial by some,^[32] 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.^[32]: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.^[34]

Its use in some contexts may give a jarring or ridiculous impression:

"... 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^[35]

"... 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^[35]

"... 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)^[35]

• 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".^[36] 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, The New York Times (1985);^[37] as quoted by Miller and Swift.^[32]:46

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:^[32]

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

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".^[32] The same would apply to the generic she, bringing a female image to mind.

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.^[38] This usage is often called the singular they. Today, some regard it as acceptable and unexceptional, especially in informal language, despite ambiguity to number.^[38][39]

• 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)^[40]

Though the "singular they" has a singular antecedent, it is used with a plural verb form.^[41]

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:^[42]

• '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. (cf., If some guy beat me up, then I'd leave him.)
• Every bride hopes that their wedding day will go as planned. (cf., Every bride hopes that her wedding day will go as planned.)

He or she, (s)he, etc.[]

The periphrasis "he or she", "him or her", "his or hers", "himself or herself" resolve the problem, though they are cumbersome. These periphrases can be abbreviated in writing as "he/she", "(s)he", "s/he", "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.

Some, such as James McCawley, suggest this formulation may promote stereotypes as "he and she [can foster] the standard sexual sterotypes [in that] if you say he or she, you imply that women aren't included unless they are specifically mentioned, and you make it easier to talk about cases where only one sex is included than where both are."^[43]

Alternation of she and he[]

Authors sometimes employ rubrics^{[according to whom?]} 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.

Historical, regional, and proposed gender-neutral singular pronouns[]

Historically, there were two gender-neutral pronouns native to English dialects, ou^{[pronunciation?]} and (h)a.^[44] According to Dennis Baron's Grammar and Gender:^[45]

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 gender-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 human or non-human animal of the opposite gender. This aforementioned hoo is also sometimes used in the West Midlands and south-west England as a common gender pronoun.^[46]

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.^[47]

Additionally, in Essex, in the south-east of England, in the Middle English period, the spelling "hye"^{[pronunciation?]} could refer to either he^[48] or she.^[49]

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.^[50][51]

Various proposals for the use of other 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,^{[pronunciation?]} a contraction of "that one" (other sources date its coinage to 1858^[52]):

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.^[53]

"Co"^{[pronunciation?]} was coined by feminist writer Mary Orovan in 1970.^[54] "Co" is in common usage in intentional communities of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities,^[55] and "co" appears in the bylaws of several of these communities.^{[56][57][58][59]} 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.^[60]

Several variants of ze^{[pronunciation?]} have been proposed, with different object forms, to meet the need of unspecified gender situations and transgender persons.^[61][62] Kate Bornstein, an American transgender author, used the pronoun forms ze and hir^{[pronunciation?]} in the book "Nearly Roadkill: an Infobahn erotic adventure" in 1996.^[63] Jeffrey A. Carver, an American science fiction writer, used the pronoun hir in the novel "From a Changeling Star" for a different-gendered nonhuman, in 1989.

List of standard and non-standard third-person singular pronouns[]

	Nominative (subject)	Oblique (object)	Independent genitive (possessive)	Dependent genitive (possessive)	Reflexive
Natural 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 they like themself
'em	–	I called 'em	–	–	–
yo (regional, c. 2004)[64][65]	Yo is laughing	I called yo	yos eyes gleam	that is yos	yo likes yoself
Written conventions based on traditional pronouns
she/he	he/she is laughing	I called him/her	his/her eyes gleam	that is his/hers	he/she likes him/herself
s/he	s/he is laughing	I called him/r	his/r eyes gleam	that is his/rs	s/he likes him/herself
hhe (French, 1986)[43]	hhe is laughing	–	–	–	–
Artificial and proposed epicene pronouns
thon (Converse, 1884)[66]	thon is laughing	I called thon	thons eyes gleam	that is thons	thon likes thonself
e (Rogers, 1890)[67]	e is laughing	I called em	es eyes gleam	that is es	e likes emself
tey[pronunciation?] (Miller&Swift, 1971)	tey is laughing	I called tem	ter eyes gleam	that is ters	tey likes temself
xe[pronunciation?] (Rickter, c. 1973)[68]	xe is laughing	I called xem	xyr eyes gleam	that is xyrs	xe likes xemself
te[pronunciation?] (Farrel, 1974)	te is laughing	I called tir	tes eyes gleam	that is tes	te likes tirself
ey[pronunciation?] (Elverson, 1975)[69]	ey is laughing	I called em	eir eyes gleam	that is eirs	ey likes eirself
per (Piercy, 1979)[70]	per is laughing	I called per	per eyes gleam	that is pers	per likes perself
ve (Hulme, c. 1980)[71]	ve is laughing	I called ver	vis eyes gleam	that is vis	ve likes verself
hu[pronunciation?] (Humanist, 1982)[72]	hu is laughing	I called hum	hus eyes gleam	that is hus	hu likes humself
E (Spivak, 1983)[73][74]	E is laughing	I called Em	Eir eyes gleam	that is Eirs	E likes Emself
ze[pronunciation?], mer (Creel, 1997)[75]	ze is laughing	I called mer	zer eyes gleam	that is zers	ze likes zemself
ze, hir (Bornstein, 1998)[76]	ze (zie, sie) is laughing	I called hir	hir eyes gleam	that is hirs	ze (zie, sie) likes hirself
zhe[pronunciation?] (Foldvary, 2000)[77]	zhe is laughing	I called zhim	zher eyes gleam	that is zhers	zhe likes zhimself
sie, hir (Hyde, 2001)[78]	sie is laughing	I called hir	hir eyes gleam	that is hirs	sie likes hirself
peh[pronunciation?] (Dicebox, 2012?)[79][80]	peh is laughing	I called pehm	pehs eyes gleam	that is pehs	peh likes pehself
ze, zir (anon., c. 2013)[81]	ze (zie, sie) is laughing	I called zir/zem	zir/zes eyes gleam	that is zirs/zes	ze (zie, sie) likes zirself/zemself
fae[pronunciation?][82][83]	fae is laughing	I called faer	faer eyes gleam	that is faers	fae likes faerself

Other Germanic languages[]

Swedish[]

The Swedish language has a four-gender distinction in its third-person pronouns: masculine, feminine, common, and neuter, which correspond to the third person forms han, hon, den, det ("he, she, it (common), it (neuter)"). The other forms are gender-neutral: singular first person jag, singular second person du, singular third person indefinite/impersonal man, plural first person vi, plural second person ni, plural third person de. The neuter gender is characterised by the definite singular article '-t', whereas common gender nouns end with '-n'. The same distinction applies to the indefinite adjectival singular forms. For people and animals with specified gender, the masculine or feminine are used. There is no gender distinction in the plural.

In Swedish, the word hen was introduced generally in the 2000s as a complement to 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 in 1966 and could be used occasionally, like in a guideline from the Swedish building council from 1980, authored by . 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.^[84]

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 an 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. "Denna/Denne" ("this one or she/he") may refer to a non-gender-specific referent already or soon-to-be mentioned ("Vederbörande kan, om denne så vill,..."/"The referent may, if he wishes,..."). Because "denne" is objectively masculine, the use of the word to refer to anyone irrespective of gender is not recommended. 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"/child 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, so "han"/"hon" is preferred, for example about children or work titles such as "föraren" ("driver") or "rörmokaren" ("plumber").

Norwegian[]

In Norwegian, a new word was proposed^{[weasel words]}, hin to fill the gap between the third person pronouns hun ('she') and han ('he').^{[citation needed]} Hin is very rarely used, and in limited special interest groups; it is not embraced by society as a whole.^{[citation needed]} 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').^{[citation needed]} One can also use man or en or den (en means 'one'). These three are considered impersonal.^{[citation needed]} Amongst LGBT interest groups the word 'hen' is now in use after the Swedish implementation in 2010.^{[85][failed verification]}

Introduction of gendered pronouns into languages that historically lacked them[]

Chinese[]

Traditionally the third person pronoun in Chinese is gender-neutral. A specific written form for "she" (她 tā) was created in the early twentieth century under the influence of European languages, but the spoken language remains ungendered.

In spoken standard Mandarin, there is no gender distinction in personal pronouns: the sound tā can mean "he" or "she" (or "it" for non-human objects).

In today's written Chinese, the same sound is written with different characters: 他 (tā) for "he", 她 (tā) for "she" and 它 (tā) for "it". However, such distinction did not exist before the late 1910s. There was only 他 (tā) for third person pronoun, which did not specify gender or humanness.

In 1917, an influential poet and linguist Liu Bannong borrowed the Old Chinese graph 她 (tā, with the radical nǚ 女 which means "female") into the written language to specifically represent "she". As a result, the old character 他 (tā), which previously could also refer to females, has become sometimes restricted to meaning "he" only in written texts. The character 他 has the radical rén (人) with means "human", which also shows it originally was a generic term for people in general instead of a term for males, which should take the radical for male, nán (男), like other Chinese characters that represent specifically male concepts.^[86]

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.^[87] The leaders of the movement also coined other characters, such 它 for objects, 牠 (radical: niú 牛, "cow") for animals, and 祂 (radical: shì 示, "revelation") for gods. Their pronunciations were all tā. The latter two have fallen out of use in mainland China.

Liu and other writers of that period tried to popularize a different pronunciation for the feminine pronoun, including yi from the Wu dialect and tuo from a literary reading, but these efforts failed, and all forms of the third person pronoun retain identical pronunciation.

This situation of identical pronunciation with split characters is present not only in Mandarin but also in many dialects and varieties of Chinese.^[86]

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.^[88]

Although there is a mention that when the antecedent of the spoken pronoun tā is unclear, native speakers will normally assume it is a male person,^[87] no evidence is given in the source to support the claim. Many researches instead demonstrate that Chinese speakers don't differentiate pronoun genders in the composition of the preverbal message that guides grammatical encoding during language production.^[89] Even proficient Chinese-English learners don't process gender information in the conceptualizer.^[90] As a result, Chinese people often mix up the gendered pronouns of European languages in speech.^[91] Chinese native speakers can make such pronoun errors when speaking English even after they have been living in an immersive environment in an English speaking country and have a relatively high English level and seldom make other types of errors.^[92]

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.^[93][94]

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 a suffix such as the gender-neutral -san added to it.

For example, "She (Ms. Saitō) came" would be "斎藤さんが来ました" (Saitō-san ga kimashita).

In 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-, a- (historical: ka-), and do-), 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 (adnominal (rentaishi) 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 tend to be dropped in the first place—kare-shi and kanojo are commonly used today to mean "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" respectively.^[95]

First-person pronouns, ore, boku, and atashi, while not explicitly carrying gender, can strongly imply gender based on the inherent levels of politeness or formality as well as hierarchical connotation.^[96] While boku and ore are traditionally known to be masculine pronouns and atashi is characterized as feminine, boku is considered to be less masculine than ore and often denotes a softer form of masculinity. To denote a sense of authority, males will tend to resort to ore to display a sense of confidence to their peers.^[96]

See also[]

• Epicenity
• Gender marking in job titles
• Gender neutrality in genderless languages
• Gender neutrality in languages with grammatical gender
• Generic antecedent
• Pronoun game
• Feminist language reform
• LGBT linguistics

Specific languages

• Gender neutrality in English
• Gender-neutral pronouns in Esperanto
• Gender neutrality in Spanish

Notes[]

Further reading[]

• Anne Curzan (2003). Gender shifts in the history of English. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521820073. (includes chapters on "she" for ships and generic he)

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-free Legal Writing
• The Epicene Pronouns: A Chronology of the Word That Failed (gender-neutral pronoun history)
• 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