Gender-neutral pronouns
In non-sexist language, gender-neutral or epicene pronouns neither reveal nor imply sex or gender when referring to people, animals or things.
In English, the only gender-specific pronouns are 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, as do the others, such as I, thou, we, you, and so on.
For those people seeking a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun, this is a problem. Common solutions include singular they, the generic male, he or she, using he and she in alternate passages, and rewording sentences .
The following sets of neologisms have their own articles, though they are all very rare and most commentators do not believe any of them will ever become widespread:
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis can be interpreted to predict that people will be less sexist if they don't distinguish between genders in pronouns and other aspects of speech.
Example
Co is one example of a proposed third person, singular, gender-neutral pronoun. The subject and object form are the same, and the possessive pronoun is cos.
Modern Chinese
The pronoun 他 (tā) means "he" and "she". So gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun should not be a problem in Chinese. However, at the time around May Fourth Movement, a new pronoun 她 (tā) has been invented to represent "she" and 他 is now often used as "he" only. It is called "modernisation" (after European languages). Sometimes 他/她 is used to mean "he/she", opponents view this usage as unnecessarily cumbersome.
Both pronouns are pronounced identically; the difference appears only in writing.
Japanese
Japanese underwent a transition similar to Chinese in which the gender neutral third person referent "kare" (彼) became associated with he, while the word "kanojo" (彼女) was invented to represent she in translated Western novels. Today, "kare" is exclusively masculine. The words can also imply boyfriend and girlfriend respectively.
Two politer third-person referents, "ano hito" and "ano kata", also exist, and are perhaps more common in everyday usage; these are both gender-neutral.
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, as hän sounds overly formal.
Esperanto
Standard Esperanto has the third person pronouns ŝi, li, and ĝi for she, he, and it, respectively; however, some users use the neologism ri as a gender-neutral third person pronoun. This usage is called riismo (ri-ism).
