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ENGLISH In Singular Personal Pronoun s. In the nominative or accusative case, the pronoun ''one'' is often used. In speech, other locutions are used in the same role, for example ''a person'', ''a fellow'', ''a soul''. A speaker may not know or may want to avoid specifying a person's gender. Common solutions include Singular ''they'' , generic ''he'', generic ''she'', '' One '', Generic ''you'' , circumlocutions such as ''he or she'', using ''he'' and ''she'' in alternate passages, and rewording sentences to avoid pronouns. (See Pronoun Game and Wikimedia's 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''. 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 The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is often interpreted by non-linguists to mean that people will be less sexist if they do not distinguish gender in pronouns or other aspects of speech. However, Patriarchal societies that speak genderless languages, such as the Chinese , demonstrate that gender-specific language is not the sole cause of sexism. OTHER LANGUAGES Sign Language In British and American Sign Language , all pronouns are gender-neutral. When one wants to refer to a person they expect to mention again in conversation, to avoid having to sign that person's name over and over, the practice is to point to a nearby space just before signing the name. From then on in the conversation, that space represents the person, and the action of pointing there becomes the sign for "she," "he," or another pronoun. Modern Chinese In modern , 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 In common usage, the Esperanto pronouns ''ŝi'', ''li'', and ''ĝi'' correspond to English ''she'', ''he'', and ''it''. Although the author, Zamenhof , recommended using ''ĝi'' in cases of unstated gender, this is done infrequently. The gender-neutral Demonstrative Pronoun ''tiu'' is commonly used instead (a usage that does not occur in English). Reformers have coined gender-neutral pronouns like ''ri'' or ''ŝli'' specifically for persons, and " Riism " has in fact made some limited progress. The major reform project Ido introduced of a specifically gender-neutral pronoun, ''lu'', which can mean he, she, and it (both Animate And Inanimate ). 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. Also ''se'' is gender-neutral. French The French singular indefinite pronoun ''on'', like English ''one'', makes no reference to gender. ''On'' is commonly used in the sense of a first-person plural pronoun. German The German Language has 3 grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. The third person singular personal pronouns are gender-specific (''er'', ''sie'' and ''es'' meaning he, she and it, respectively). The plural form of personal pronouns, ''sie'', is gender-neutral. Of possesive, reflexive, relative and Demonstrative Pronoun s, all singular forms are gender-specific while all plural forms are gender-neutral. Interrogative Pronoun s (''wer'', ''wessen'', ''wem'', ''wen'', ''welchen'' and ''was für einen'' / ''who'', ''whose'', ''whom'', ''who'', ''which'' and ''what kind'') and Indefinite Pronoun s ''jemand'' and ''niemand'' (''somebody'' and ''nobody'') are gender-neutral. All pronouns (except interrogative) can be declined into one of 4 cases, showing their state as subject, possession, direct or indirect object in the sentence. Case declination is gender-specific. Hungarian Since Hungarian does not have any grammatical gender, all personal pronouns are gender-neutral. E.g.: ''ő'' ("he/she"), ''övé'' ("his/hers"), ''vele'' ("with him/her"), ''érte'' ("for him/her"), etc. There is no neutral grammatial gender either, so the third person English personal pronoun ''it'' is translated to the Hungarian ''ez'' or ''az'' (literally, "this" and "that", respectively). The terms ''ez'' and ''az'' only apply to inanimate objects, so using ''ez'' or ''az'' to refer to a person is regarded to be very rude, as it denounces the person to "thinghood". 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 personal pronouns of any kind, with all words meaning "I", "you", and, in general, all other words meaning people, being grammatically nouns. Novial In Novial the third person pronoun ''le'' means ''he or she or it''. There are also the gender specific pronouns ''lo, la'' and ''lu'' (''he, she'' and ''it'' respectively). Each has a corresponding plural ''les, los, las'' and ''lus'' all translated as ''they'' in English. 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. Some more common gender-neutral pronouns however are ''hen'' (he/she) and ''henom'' (him/her). The Swedish Language Council recommends ''den'' (it) for third person singular of indefinite gender. Tagalog Tagalog has no gender distinction in grammar, so the third person pronoun ''siya'' can mean either ''he'' or ''she''. This is the case with all of the Languages Of The Philippines and perhaps other Austronesian Languages . Tamil The respectful/plural third-person Tamil pronoun ''avar'' can be used to refer to a gender-neutral third person. The pronoun ''athu'', generally used for objects and animals (similar to ''that'' in English ) and considered derogatory when used for a person, is sometimes used in slang and informal conversations in a humorous way. Proto-Indo-European In the hypothetical Proto-Indo-European Language , there are some reconstructed terms for certain gender-neutral Pronouns .
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