Pronouns Part 1: The Presence of Gender-Neutral Pronouns in the English Language (or lack thereof)
- Jonathan
- May 12, 2015
- 3 min read
First of all, YES, there have been gender-neutral pronouns in the English language. Yet, somehow... we lost them somwhere along the way! At this point in history, there are no official gender-neutral pronouns in the language. However, there are a ton of proposed ones.
~This will be a long post, intended as a reference.~
(For the remainder of the post...
n = nomitive case
a = accusative case
pos = pronominal posessive
pre = predicative possessive
r = reflexive
.... to identify different forms of the pronouns.)
History of English Gender-Neutral Pronouns:
Ou
One of the earliest use of gender-neutral pronouns in the English language is the pronoun Ou.
Ou was invented in 1789 by William H. Marshall. It can be traced back to the epicene "a" that was used beginning in the 14th century. Both the Oxford English Dictionary and the Wright's English Dialect Dictionary confirmed "a" could be used for he, she, they, it, and I.
Ou was used in K.A. Cook's short story entitled The Differently Animated and Queer Society.
N = When I tell someone a joke ou laughs. (equals = he/she)
A = When I greet a friend I hug ou. (equals = them)
Pos = When someone does not get a haircut, ous hair gets long. (equals = his/her)
Pre = If I need a phone, my friend let me borrow ous. (equals = his/hers)
R = Each child feeds ouself. (equals = hisself/herself)
*E
Known as "splat pronouns", *E originated on the internet in the 1990's. It utilises an asterisk to represent the ambiguity from "she" or "he".
*e, h*, = he/she
h*s, *es, h*rs, = his/hers
h*self, *eself, = hisself/herself
E
This pronoun is often called a "spivak pronoun". It was first used (with a collection of others) by Michael Spivak in his manual The Jox of TeX. (however, the book doesn't specify whether or not he created them or if they were inspired by something else.)
Spivak pronouns are often used in internet culture and were featured in multiple science fiction novels.
N = When I tell someone a joke E laughs.
A = When I greet a friend I hug Em.
Pos = When someone does not get a haircut, Eir hair grows long.
Pre = If I need a phone, my friend lets me borrow Eirs.
R = Each child feeds Emself.
Sie
This pronoun was dirifed from the German pronoun for she and they.
N = When I tell someone a joke sie laughs
A = When I greet a friend I hug hir.
Pos = When someone does not get a haircut, hir hair grows long.
Pre = If I need a phone, my friend lets me borrow hirs.
R = Each child feeds hirself.
Global Gender-Neutral Pronouns:
Sweden recently added "Hen" to their dictionary. It is a gender-neutral pronoun in between hon (she) and han (he).
Russia has the pronoun "они" {ah-nee} which is gender-neutral, but is not used in the same context as the English "it".
Many languages have all-encompasing pronouns, that don't specify a gender. These include languages like French (ils - mixed~gender groups) and Spanish (su - genderless your/his/her/they).
Icelandic has the pronoun "þau" which is a gender-neutral pronoun between þeir (m. only)and þær (f. only).
Korean has a gender-neutral pronoun "geu(그)" however it isn't very common.
Thai has a gender neutral pronoun for all of it's "persons" {first, second, and third}
First Person: ฉัน (chan) เรา (rao)
Second Person: คุณ (khun) เธอ (ther)
Third Person: เขา (khao)
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These are a few examples of *proposed* English gender-neutral pronouns! There are TONS more though!
Other gender-neutral pronouns include but are not limited to:
A, Ae, Ai, Ala, Ce, Che, Co, Em, Et, Ey, Ha, He, He'er, he-or-she, hey, hi, hie, id, ip, ir, kai, le, na, ne, one, ou, peh, per, re, se, s/he, tey, they, thon, v, ve, xe, xie, yo, zhe, ze, zie, Þe, Ȝe and Ðe
There's so many! See! It doesn't take a linguist to invent new words :D!
~Fun Fact: Epicenes are listed in the Oxford English dictionary as a words that have only one form that represents both male/masculine and female/feminine referents~
If you think this is crazy, at one time, there were pronouns that specified people's race!
There will be more on this on a later post!
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