Talk:Gender neutrality in languages with gendered third-person pronouns/Archive 2

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How are epicene ‘a’ and ‘ou’ pronounced?

Somehow, I could find quite a few sites mentioning both, but no word on how they’re pronounced. Is it ‘ah’ or ‘eh’? Is it ‘oh’, ‘oo’, or Cockney ‘how’? How do these pronouns decline? 132.66.27.142 (talk) 02:10, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

A is the weak form of ha, which covered he, heo, hi (he, she, they). I don't know how ha was pronounced, but according to the OED, a was pronounced /ə/, like the weak form of the article a/an. Can't find ou.
BTW, the OED says hoo is dialectical for heo 'she', not he/she/it. — kwami (talk) 05:21, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
I tried looking it up on Google Books and couldn’t fine ‘ou’ in any edition... Does it mention declension? 31.168.178.176 (talk) 05:08, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Solutions used in fiction?

One solution for gender-neutral pronouns that I have seen is in the novels of science fiction author David Weber. In his novels, the speaker uses their gender as the gender-neutral, so all men use "he" and all women use "she".

Dmclean (talk) 18:28, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

"co" and "cos"

I am moving this question from the article:
In the Example section about Co and Cos, User:Daniel_Quinlan asked, "(What do they mean?)"
Paige 14:39, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Just a note: I put the question in the article on purpose — I'm well aware of how to use Talk pages. I don't want any readers to think they're stupid for not knowing the answer. It seemed rather non-obvious enough for me. I think it's okay to indicate when articles are incomplete in the article itself. Daniel Quinlan 17:32, Aug 14, 2003 (UTC)
Daniel, I want you to know that certainly no offense, implication or insult was intended, but quite often those questions have a way of staying in the articles for some time, especially considering that the info has been in the article for a while and is in the disambig page co (since the contributor may not check the article again for some time). As far as the meaning, I understand it to be simply what the section says, a neologism that is used as a gender-neutral third person pronoun. It seems to be used mainly by groups like the Federation of Egalitarian Communities, a commune group, and seems to have evolved from the prefix "co-" as in co-ed, originally from the Latin "com-." However, there are no formal definitions available. There is also a pronoun "co" in Polish and possibly Czech, but since I know very little about those languages, I do not know if this could be related. There is an article about it here: [1], and an almost humorous discussion involving it here : [2], including this line: "supposedly the "co/co/cos/cos/coself" scheme had some actual use among alternative co-opters in the 1970's." Can you think of anyway we could clarify this section in the article? -Paige 18:21, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

co is an English (proposed) gender-neutral pronoun, right? Doesn't say that anywhere, and I want to be sure before I add it. --Spikey 17:08, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I've been using co/cos/co's/coself since the 1970s, when I learned about them from snailmail from the Twin Oaks community (twinoaks d*t org). It's possible to google them up, and Wiktionary has "co", but I haven't found an online reference for the full declension: 

 he      she     co        Co wrote this comment.
 his     her     cos       This is cos comment.
 his     hers    cos       This is comment is cos.
 he's    she's   co's      Co's the author of this comment.
 himself herself coself    Co wrote this comment coself.

To me, co/cos/co's/coself seem much more obvious than stuff like "ze", so it would be nice to have their declension fully documented; but we need to find a reference. 73.53.61.168 (talk) 11:23, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

"Personal pronouns did not exist in traditional Japanese writing"?

This would seem to imply otherwise. While ware ("I" or "me") might be a "noun" rather than a "personal pronoun", it certainly does not "[belong] to the demonstrative paradigm", so the explanation given in the following sentence for kare and kano-jo doesn't work for ware. The cited source seems to be talking only about third-person pronouns, but clumsily fails to clarify this in its opening sentence on the topic.

Note I'm talking strictly about the historical usage mentioned in the first sentence, so the following paragraph discussing modern-day first-person pronouns does not count.

Also, regarding "they are commonly used today as ways of saying 'girlfriend' and 'boyfriend'": I've actually very rarely heard the word kare used to refer to someone's boyfriend, but frequently as a pronoun. The less-ambiguous kare-shi seems to be the more common word for "boyfriend". Is it possible the cited source is outdated or speaking in overly general terms?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:18, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

And yes, I know hunting down several hundred classical poems that appear to contradict our article's claim is technically original research, and I know the current claim is technically sourced, but it is sourced poorly (it assumes that the source means something when the source looks like it means something else), and if my original research is correct then that means the current wording is incorrect, and we need to find a way to reconcile them. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:22, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

"as with you"?

The "Singular they section states that singular they is "used with verbs conjugated in the plural, as with you": what does this mean? The standard singular you is used with verbs conjugated in the plural? Is that really how it works? My gut feeling is that this is wrong, but I actually don't know, which is why I'm reluctant to remove it; can we find a source? Stereotypical archaic usage (thou vs. ye) does make the distinction between them (according to this at least), but I'm really not sure... Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:05, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

I presume this refers to the development of the historically plural you [are] supplanting the singular thou [art], i.e. the semantically singular you is used with the (formerly) plural form of the verb. The gender neutrality of first- and second-person singular pronouns is taken for granted, you and thou are not discussed, and most readers will not be particularly familiar with the development of you, so I think the "as with you" is likely to confuse readers unnecessarily and is best removed. It may have made more sense in former versions of the article.--Boson (talk) 20:30, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

"yo" reference

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.[7][8] -- another reference: http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/04/25/178788893/yo-said-what 70.49.105.19 (talk) 18:22, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

First person?

A lot of ink spilled regarding the third person (enabling pointing fingers at the Other), but a gender-specific set of first-person pronouns would enable individuals to announce their preferred orientation. Would that be too much to ask? It's done in some languages, such as Thai. Kortoso (talk) 22:46, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Ki / Kin Pronoun addition

Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer is proposing ki as new pronoun to refer to entities beyond humans. I just wanted to share the concept with this community.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/together-with-earth/alternative-grammar-a-new-language-of-kinship http://www.onbeing.org/program/robin-wall-kimmerer-the-intelligence-in-all-kinds-of-life/8446 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.56.28.68 (talk) 16:48, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

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German?

Odd that the Indo-European section discusses French and lists Icelandic, Swedish and Norwegain, but doesn't include German. Sca (talk) 21:04, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

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This is an encyclopaedia, moonspeak should not be tolerated; none of the sources are even true sources.

Most of the sources here, especially regarding pronouns are from papers written by nobody with actual qualifications (except maybe in 'gender studies') also none of these pronouns can be used in real life. I cannot go into a court of law and be referred to as ze, zu, Zimbabwae or Cthulhu. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia and should be treated as such. This is a page written by angsty teenagers and holds no weight whatsoever and only further helps to solidify Wikipedia as an unreliable source during any sort or referencing. PS: I forgot to check my privilege at the door. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.97.44.206 (talk) 19:52, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

This does raise a good point. Although these pronouns are rightly referred to as "non-traditional", we currently do not have much of a distinction between those that actually made it into books (e.g. Spivak) and those that seem to be nothing more than one-off online proposals. Perhaps a better cutoff would be to ask: has anyone who is not the creator of those pronouns actually used them consistently in a reliable, published work, outside giving examples? You also raise a good point that all of these sound very unnatural: for example, I do not think I would understand any of them except singular they and he/she. Given how the former is currently quite unexceptional, it strikes me that there should be more emphasis on that than there is for the multitude of arbitrary coinages. Double sharp (talk) 05:41, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Confusion

Yeah, sex is confusing enough without getting mixed up over gender roles! --Uncle Ed

Whose viewpoint is this?

The advantage of having separate pronouns for men, women, and inanimate objects is in sentences like the following: 'John loved Mary's dog. He had given it to her a year ago'. This is somewhat arbitrary: one could imagine race-specific or age-specific pronouns for the same purpose, but no need for these is felt. The disadvantage is that gender has to be taken into account in sentences semantically unrelated to gender, see also below.

It's not common knowledge, unless I'm unusually ignorant about grammar. (Which is a possibility. Considering that the last two sentences are sentence fragments. And you don't start sentences with a conjunction. Not to mention agreement of number...) --Uncle Ed

I agree with Ed, at least with his concern about the above passage. Besides probably being POV, I am not even sure it is true -- it sounds like an after the fact attempt to justify why something is the way it is. IS there any evidence at all that this is why the practice arose or persists? As Ed would have it, according to whom? My sense is that all languages have different ways of dealing with the problem of how to communicate necessary or useful information; I doubt that it makes any sense to say any language is better or worse at this; I don't see any point to talking about advantages and disadvantages -- I am for deleting this, and if anyone agrees with me, go ahead, Slrubenstein
It's a comment about an advantage of the status quo, not an assertion about how the status quo came about. But by all means delete it. Martin

Unless context reveals the pronoun to be masculine, 'he', 'his', 'him' is gender common. e.g. "Each must come forward to give his testimony." The politically correct "... their testimony." is entirely improper English: it does not agree in number with the subject, nor does it correctly describe the inherent idea that it is an individual person, not a group, who gives testimony. Moreover, there is nothing in the original sentence that suggests each person being referred to is male. The pronoun is gender common. --tttecumseh Preceding comment imported by Victor Yus (talk | contribs) 10:18, 17 June 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Boson (talk • contribs)

the intro is for summaries, not specific details

If people would refrain from adding specific information about specific solutions to the intro, I believe that would improve the article. The point of an introduction is to summarise what comes later, not to make it redundant. That means name-checking each of the four most common solutions, but not going into detail:

That's what I've done. If more detail is added to the intro regarding singular they, then corresponding info must be added to the intro regarding the other three, or the intro becomes unbalanced. Alternatively, if anybody would like to offer any actual evidence that one of these four is vastly less common than the other three, and can be dropped, then please go ahead.

In my personal experience, which is not evidence, the percentages would be rougly as below. Of course knowing how often a rewording strategy is used is inherently difficult because it is impossible to distinguish between a sentence that was drafted as plural and one that was drafted as singular and changed to the plural to avoid the he/she problem. Also it is difficult to tell the difference between the generic male used properly, and male pronouns used because the speaker is assuming that all members of the relevant group are male.

  • singular they (30%)
  • generic male (25%)
  • he or she (15%)
  • rewording the sentence (30%)

FWIW, I personally hate the generic male, and hope it dies a quick and painful death. The other three I find clumsy but tolerable, while sie and hir (which I use when I can) I find elegant but hopelessly naive.
The sections in this article about singular they and the generic male could do with much work, because they were constructed by cutting and pasting from the previous introduction. *steps down from soapbox* -Martin 15:46 Dec 5, 2002 (UTC)

... not a style guide

Wikipedia is not a style guide, or a soap box for social engineers. I moved nearly the entire page here. --Ed Poor

Ok, I can accept the style guide argument. Not clear on why it might be viewed as social engineering, though. *shrug* -Martin

This is now a more useful article. Personally, I will continue my practice of the last 30 years of using the unmentioned solution, the generic she , or writing around it entirely. I like the external link to the meta discussion though. Ortolan88

I'm a little perplexed as to what exactly made this a style guide. I can see that the usage examples could be bad... but Ed added some of those (for it and him), so I did think I was on the right track there. Current guess is just too much detail and detail that's not necessary in an encyclopedia - am I close?
I don't want to make same mistake with gender-specific pronoun (which mentions generic she), sie and hir, singular they, spivak pronoun... -Martin

A styleguide tells people how they should use language. Your styleguide is excellent, which is why I preserved it. However, the Wikipedia is not in the business of telling people how to act. If it were, the arguments over the stardard of right conduct would be endless and all-consuming. --Ed Poor

"impute" vs. "reveal"

"Gender-neutral pronouns neither reveal nor impute sex or gender when referring to people, animals or things."

(1) I had to look up "impute". Is there a particular reason why "reveal" and "impute" are both used? To me they mean pretty much the same thing in this context, is there some subtle implication that I'm not getting? How about just "indicate"? GGano

Consider this sentence: "Chris washed her hair" - 'her' reveals that Chris is a woman (Christine, one imagines).
Consider this sentence: "every doctor cares for his patients" - 'his' imputes that all doctors are male, something that isn't the case.
"indicate" is probably fine. Martin

(2) More controvertially: "sex or gender" seems weird here, and linking to gender roles seems completely wrong, at least with the current content of that page. Pronouns do not indicate anything about the role of the person, only their biological sex (or at least their perceived biological sex). I think the gender page is being naive when it says that "gender" cannot mean "sex". This usage may be "incorrect" according to some people, but it certainly is the most common everyday usage, and the above sentence is a good example. It uses "gender" to mean "sex", but this questionable prohibition causes it to link to "gender role", which is wrong.

GGano

regarding the gender page, why not take it up at talk:gender - I happen to agree with you.
imo, pronouns don't merely impute biological sex, they also impute gender. A pre-op female-to-male transsexual may be biologically female, but he will still typically prefer to be referred using male pronouns to reflect his current gender. Martin
I did, we'll see what happens. IMO pronouns may impute gender or sex, depending. E.g. if your pre-op transsexual were to visit a doctor, the doctor would probably use "she" in his/her notes. And I've seen no end of "she - I mean he" or vice versa in popular writing about RuPaul, etc. I think the answer is that pronouns were originally meant to impute sex, but now it varies (in the relatively small number of cases where the sex and gender may be different). Of course, this all assumes that "gender" means something along the lines of "the sex you identify with", rather than "your biological sex, used when talking about sociological issues", which I think remains controversial. GGano

Table

The Sie and hir article has a little table showing different forms. I think this article should have a table with all the different forms in it, alternative words, sie zie co it ey etc. and maybe have another column to show how popular they are. I came here looking for information on these words, and there isn't much. - Omegatron 14:40, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)

I don't believe there are any stats on popularity around, but if you find any I'd be interested. Martin 22:04, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)
they don't need to be scientifically exact. it already says that some forms are more popular than others. even something like a google search gives a general idea:
Results 1 - 10 of about 862 English pages for zie zir.
Results 1 - 10 of about 2,180 English pages for hie hir.
According to this page [3]: "Depending on how one counts, there are between three and five active groups. The two most popular seem to be "sie, hir, hir, hirs, hirself", (especially "hir"), and "zie, zir, zir, zirs, zirself"." - Omegatron 05:25, Jul 12, 2004 (UTC)

Ve and verself were introduced by Keri Holme in 1976, according to [4].

even more-specific pronouns

I've been told that Vietnamese have a much larger set of pronouns. A single pronoun reveals not only first, second, or third person? and male or female?, and also older than speaker, or younger than speaker?.

If this is true, is it worth mentioning in the article?

Gender oppression in Chinese Culture?

Does it just seem to me that the brief discussion on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and chinese culture seems to take it as a given that the reader knows/believes that china is heavily sexist? Or at least believes china to be MORE oppressive/sexist than other, gender-specific-pronoun-languaged cultures. The very next paragraph, in fact, goes on to explain that gender specific pronouns DO exist in chinese. Was there a change in the way chinese culture viewed gender? Did its model become more european during this cultural revolution? This section seems very under analyzed.

-- osairuit

pronoun 'per;

check this one out.

per isn't in the wikipedia article, but it's one i prefer to use. it's on here a little bit. here's a list that includes per http://www.aetherlumina.com/gnp/listing.html and on their faq it's mentioned as well http://www.aetherlumina.com/gnp/faq.html

In the fictional Chakat Universe

Another spelling of “sie” is “shi”. In the Chakat Universe “shi” and “hir” are used about simultaneous hermaphrodites. “Hy”, “hym” and “hys” are used about sequential hermaphrodites. The first website I linked to is that of Bernard Dove who made up the chakat species. This website has been misunderstood as a collection of furry pornography. In fact, only a small part of the content is intended as erotica. Most of it is soft science fiction for an adult audience. Consequentially, sex is treated as a normal part of life. Anyone who know any other fictional use of gender-neutral pronouns?

2010-06-14 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.

Given its prevalence

…in current media discussions, including the debate in Canada, the minimal coverage and discussion of ze/zir needs to be remediated. 73.211.138.148 (talk) 17:00, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

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Archiving

If there are no objections, I will configure automatic archiving for threads that have been dormant for three months. --Boson (talk) 09:25, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

@Boson not sure what happened here, you probably forgot, but I've set up the archive bot.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  02:39, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
The bot seems to be having problems with some of the older stuff (pre-2011). Should we move it manually to the beginning of Archive 1, or would that be confusing? --Boson (talk) 18:50, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
I manually archived the old sections that appeared to be more than 90 days old. The bot was ignoring them because they weren't properly signed. (Autosignature isn't enough). EdJohnston (talk) 19:53, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Requested move 9 January 2017

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved. (non-admin closure) JudgeRM (talk to me) 21:52, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Gender-specific and gender-neutral third-person pronouns → Third-person pronoun – I don't see the reason why we should have 'Gender-specific and gender-neutral' in the title, surely if we are discussing gender-specific as well as gender-neutral pronouns, we are discussing all third person pronouns? Therefore per WP:CONCISE we should use the much simpler title. a simple google search for 'Third person pronoun' indicates that this kind of title for this topic is common elsewhere as well. The title should also be singular rather than plural per WP:SINGULAR  InsertCleverPhraseHere  20:59, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

  • Support move. The current title is simply too long.  ONR  (talk)  06:21, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Support This request is logical and results in a simple, easily understandable and descriptive page name. Trankuility (talk) 06:23, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Support Oppose (unless content is changed accordingly). The proposed title does not provide sufficient information to identify the topic of the current article, which appears to be pronominal gender (in different languages, but especially English). --Boson (talk) 11:22, 10 January 2017 (UTC) Changed to "support" since the proposed title is, on balance, better than the current one, but suggest reviewing the title again later, depending on the development of the content, since (based on the current content) the proposed title does not provide "sufficient information to identify the topic to a person familiar with the subject area" (per WP:CONCISE). I think we have a chicken-and-egg situation with the content and the title. --Boson (talk) 07:24, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Support. The current title fails both WT:CONCISE and WP:PLURAL, and (in being so redundant) is a WP:COMMONSENSE matter, too. People are free to add information about other third-person pronouns any time they want, and that probably should have been done already. Per WP:SUMMARY this need not even be done in detail, since we already have other articles, e.g. They. Should there be a desire to limit this article to discussions of third person pronouns and gender, that's also possible, but it still wouldn't be under a title like this (maybe "Gender and third-person pronouns", or the previous title "Pronominal gender").  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:13, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Content and title of article

I have created a new sub-section because this is more about content (in relation to the article title) and a discussion of alternatives. I agree that the current title is not ideal, but I don't think the proposed title would provide sufficient information to identify the actual topic (of the current content). The article seems to be about only one aspect of personal pronouns, namely their gender-specificity or gender-neutrality in various languages, including English. The content and the title seem to have drifted apart in the past. The article does not discuss relative pronouns, interrogative pronouns, etc. but it does briefly discuss some non-third-person pronouns in languages other than English; much of the article uses gender in the sense of social gender, but parts are more about grammatical gender. I wonder if part of the solution might be to split out most of the stuff on gender-neutral pronouns in English and keep (and rename) this article as a survey of pronominal gender (all persons) in different languages (possibly with a hatnote (and a navbox?) to help maintain the focus. --Boson (talk) 11:22, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

@Boson I agree that the content of the article is angled heavily toward the gender specificity of third person pronouns, but this is really only true of the lede, and several specific sections of the article. It also contains all relevant information describing the use and nature of third person pronouns in general, in a variety of contexts and languages. Personally I think the solution is a simple one; change the name to 'Third person pronoun', and change the emphasis of the lede away from gender specificity (except one paragraph outlining the controversy and nature of gender specificity in third person pronouns). The majority of the lede should be about third person pronouns in general, as that is what the majority of the content of the article is about. I read this article primarily as an article about third person pronouns in general, with a smaller article within it on 'Gender specificity in third-person pronouns'. While the gender specificity content could be split away, I think it fits well within the umbrella of 'third-person pronoun' and the subjects integrate well. In short, the lede is too hung up on gender specificity, and I think this is a minor issue with changing the name of the article.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  21:04, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
@Insertcleverphrasehere:, I am quite sympathetic to the idea of an article entitled something like "Third-person personal pronoun" but I would like to see what others think – and get some idea of the "boundaries" of the content.
I think this article started life in 2002 with the title Gender-neutral pronouns and began "Suppose that instead of 'he' and 'she', we had different pronouns for people with different coloured skin. When referring to a black person we'd say 'ne', and when referring to a white person we'd say 'ge'. ... It's a pretty silly idea, and it's clear to see how racist it could be. Yet we follow exactly the same idea with regards to gender. Is this something that should be changed - and if so, how?" So the article was originally very much about natural gender.
The history of the title seems to be something like:
  • Gender-neutral pronouns
  • Gender-neutral pronoun
  • Gender-specific and gender-neutral pronouns
  • Pronominal gender
  • Gender-specific and gender-neutral pronouns
  • Gender-specific and gender-neutral third-person pronouns
I was responsible for the addition of "third-person", so I obviously agree with much of what you say, though I was wondering if I had gone too far, since there is a little information on first- and second-person pronouns in other languages. --Boson (talk) 00:28, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
I think your change was correct for the time, given the evolution of this article I think that perhaps it was a step not far enough. A name change to 'Third-person pronoun' will encourage users to grow this article into what it really should be, which is a comprehensive article on third-person pronouns, incorporating aspects of gender specificity (but under the general umbrella of third person pronouns). If at such time the gender aspect grows to a point that it becomes unwieldy within this article (which it isn't currently IMO) the articles could easily be split.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  00:51, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
I take your point. I suspect there will always tend be problems with this article because the topic of pronouns can be dissected in various ways and the intended scope is not clear. The article states at the end of the introduction "Pronouns such as who and which are not discussed here, though similar but different consideration may apply to them." I would prefer a comment like this in a hatnote, so that editors and readers are made aware of the scope from the start, though I also wonder if we should retain the exclusion.
The scope of the article is clearly some aspects of pronouns: it is almost exclusively about third-person personal (and reflexive) pronouns and very largely about natural/social/biological gender, but with some information about grammatical gender, which should possibly be viewed as something completely different, though the two are often conflated).
The topic of pronouns can be dissected along several dimensions, so I would expect an article titled "third-person pronouns" to cover all the dimensions other than person, e.g .
  • language (French, German, ...) [it does this, but only from the point of view of gender]
  • number (singular, plural) [it does this, covering singular and plural]
  • type (personal, indefinite, demonstrative, relative, interrogative, reflexive) [it does not do this, being limited to personal (and reflexive) pronouns; indefinite pronouns are mentioned only as antecedents].
  • case (nominative/subjective, accusative/objective, genitive/possessive), e.g. they, them, their, theirs [it does not do this]
  • syntax, function, and usage (e.g. It is raining", "It is obvious that ...") [this is not dealt with]
  • diachronic, synchronic [almost exclusively synchronic].
  • Since we also have articles on pronouns, English personal pronouns, indefinite pronouns, interrogative words, and individual third-person pronouns such as he, she, and it, it is not, as yet, clear to me how content should be distributed among the various articles. Should we, for instance, mention the impersonal use of it or should that be left to the article on It? What about usage like "Is that he/him?"? Does it make sense to discuss "who" as a third-person pronoun?
-- Boson (talk) 16:29, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
I guess we have a few options, change this article to 'third person pronoun', and then fill in missing details. Change it to 'Third-person personal pronouns'. Change it to something like 'Gender specificity in third-person pronouns' or 'Third-person pronoun gender'. Or leave it where it is. Let me know which of these you prefer. I find it hard to believe we should have a title like the one this article has, it is unwieldy and not concise enough. I can see your point though about changing it to 'Third-person pronoun' expanding the scope a bit too much, perhaps 'Third-person personal pronoun' is better. probably the least impactful would just be a change to 'Gender specificity in third-person pronouns'  InsertCleverPhraseHere  20:56, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
I don't think it would be appropriate to leave the title as it is, so – if that is otherwise the general consensus – I have no problem with striking my "oppose" ("without prejudice", on the understanding that material not related to gender needs to be added). If the content stays as it is, I would prefer "Pronominal gender". I think this is more a problem of how material is distributed over different articles. I am not entirely convinced that we need a (non-language-specific) article specifically on third-person pronouns (any more than we need an article on plural pronouns or nominative pronouns), but the main point, in my opinion, is to decide whether this article is still about gender neutrality (or lack thereof) or is really about third-person pronouns. --Boson (talk) 10:02, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
After looking at other language Wikipedias I'm supporting Gender-neutral pronouns as the title. There is good information in the Swedish article on this topic, at sv:Könsneutralt personligt pronomen (Gender-neutral personal pronouns). I can only read this article with the Google Translator, but it does do a survey of 18 world languages to see how they handle this. The German Wikipedia has no matching article devoted to gender-neutral pronouns, but it has a general article at de:Geschlechtergerechte Sprache (gender-neutral language) that reviews different parts of speech. In fr:Langage non sexiste (Gender-neutral language), the French Wikipedia takes a survey of a variety of languages. Our own article at Gender neutrality in English has good material. After looking at these alternatives, Gender-neutral pronouns might be the best title for the present article, and the Swedish article gives at least an idea of its possible scope. EdJohnston (talk) 03:51, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
This particular article's content and scope is currently far beyond your proposed title however. If such an article were to be created, it could be split from the section in this article on gender-neutral pronouns in the future.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  04:08, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

themself

Themself is a semi-respectable reflexive/intensive form of "singular they" (not of ordinary plural "they", of course), and it's included several times in the article, but it's not really discussed, and is not included in the table. AnonMoos (talk) 03:21, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Gender pronoun politics

The idea of a word like he or she being transformed in meaning makes it a political topic, and gender pronoun politics seems like a good place for that topic. -Inowen (talk) 04:48, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Hamlet Reference

The example used of the singular they from Shakespeare's Hamlet is, in fact, not an example of the singular they. In "'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother, since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear the speech," them (they) refers to mothers, not a mother; i.e., replacing the pronoun with its antecedent would render "since nature makes mothers partial," the alternative with "a mother" sounding false. 24.140.24.131 (talk) 23:17, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Original research

I think the banner atop the page refers to the following sentence from section 2.3 of the article, titled "Generic he", when claiming it contains original research:"It may be that forms of the pronoun he had been used for both sexes during the Middle English and Modern English periods." See? Beginning a section with "It may be that..." is a clear mark of original research, at least as far as I'm concerned. --Fandelasketchup (talk) 14:26, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Original research

Everybody feels like an expert in their native language. As a result, there is a massive amount of completely unsupported assertions in this article, some of which might be true, others of which are not. Either way, they need to be supported by reliable sources. For starters, we could just delete the entire section on Spanish, since not a word of it has any support. That's far from the only section with this problem, but it was my entry point into this article, so that's the section I'm most familiar with. Mathglot (talk) 04:56, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Reputable/reliable sources for stuff that anyone can make up new at the drop of a hat. Good luck finding anything. --jae (talk) 01:52, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Hebrew is given as an example twice

Under the "other languages" Hebrew is given twice as an example. The first time it is put under "Asian languages" alongside Arabic while the second time it is put under "Semitic languages" and it seems more detailed and informative than the first.

Should we fix this redundancy as it is confusing for readers and maybe group both Hebrew and Arabic under Semitic languages?ICanHelpYou (talk) 14:16, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Fixed this. Since "Semitic languages" is a synonym of Afro-Asiatic, I've moved both Hebrew and Arabic to that section. Marfinan (talk) 13:16, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

How publish additional genderless?

I don't see the genderless pronoun forms I worked out a while ago in the article's table, and I still think they're better than all the ones I've seen. Can someone advise me on a minimal publication requirement for inclusion in the article? Would appearance in the Harvard Crimson student newspaper suffice? Their editions stay archived online and so the article could be consulted thereafter. Thanks. –Roy McCoy (talk) 17:27, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

@Roy McCoy: Even though it's the Harvard student newspaper, it's still a student paper, so I don't think that's a sufficient level of editorial review for this case. —C.Fred (talk) 17:32, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
@C.Fred: Durn. How about the Boston Globe? Do you or someone else have any other suggestions? Thanks. –Roy McCoy (talk) 20:02, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
@Roy McCoy: The Globe is a reliable source. Boston.com should qualify as well. I'd be reluctant to accept the Herald as reliable, though. —C.Fred (talk) 19:33, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks C.Fred. I was thinking of an article about my pronouns, but now I'm wondering whether you're thinking more of an article in which they were actually used rather than discussed. Can you tell me which it is? –Roy McCoy (talk) 19:47, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
@Roy McCoy: If we're talking about a novel form of pronoun that you developed, it would be better to show that it's in wider usage. —C.Fred (talk) 19:56, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

second-person plural

This article discusses the third person singular and plural pronouns (e.g. they), but should also discuss second person collective pronouns (hey guys, you guys, you all, y'all, plural-you, you folks, etc). Cesiumfrog (talk) 22:20, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Most of those are not pronouns. --Arkracer! 11:50, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Article on CHinese pronouns in Taiwanese textbooks

Found https://web.uri.edu/iaics/files/Vincent-Tsu-Wen-CHENG.pdf WhisperToMe (talk) 18:41, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Additional pronouns to include

  • (s)he/hir/hirs/hirself,
  • ae/aer/aers/aerself,
  • bun/buns/buns/bunself,
  • co/cos/cos/coself,
  • e/em/eir/emself,
  • e/em/e’s/e’s/emself,
  • e/h*/h*s/h*self,
  • e/het/hets/hetself,
  • ey/eim/eir/eirself,
  • ey/em/eir/emself,
  • fey/fer/fers/ferself,
  • fey/feyr/feyself,
  • fey/feys/feyself,
  • fir/firs/firself,
  • hann/hann/hanns/hannself,
  • he/him/his/himself,
  • herm/herm/herm's/hermself,
  • hesh/hesh/hesh's/hesh's/heshelf,
  • heshe/hen/hes/himself,
  • hi/hem/hes/himself,
  • himer/himer/himers/himerself,
  • hse/hse/hse's/hseself,
  • hy/hym/hys/himself,
  • ir/iro/irs/irself,
  • it/it/its/itself,
  • jam/jam/jams/jamself,
  • jee/jem/jeirs/jemself,
  • jhey/jhem/jheir/jheirself,
  • kir/kir/kirs/kirself,
  • le/lim/lis/limself,
  • ne/nem/neir/neirself,
  • ne/nis/nimself,
  • ou/ou/ous/ouself,
  • phe/phe/phe’s/phe's self,
  • she/her/hers/herself,
  • sie/hir/hirs/herself,
  • sie/hir/hirself,
  • they/them/their/themselves,
  • thon/thon/thons/thonself,
  • ve/ver/vis/verself,
  • whomp/wizz/whirr/whizself,
  • xe/hir/hirs/hirself,
  • xe/xim/xis/ximself,
  • xe/xir/xirs/xirself,
  • xie/xem/xyr/xemself,
  • yo/yo/yos/youself,
  • yre/yres/yreself,
  • zay/zir/zirs/zirself,
  • ze/hir/hirs/hirself,
  • ze/zan/zan/zanself,
  • ze/zim/zees/zeeself,
  • ze/zir/zirs/zirself
  • zed/zed/zeds/zedself,
  • zed/zed/zeir/zedself,
  • zhe/zhim/zhir/zhirself,
  • Fox “When ‘He’ or ‘She’ Doesn’t Fit” bostonglobe.com
  • “Gender Pronouns” uwm.edu
  • “Pronoun Master List” genderfluidsupport.tumblr.com
  • Grollman “And Your Preferred Pronoun?” insidehighered.com
  • Jaschik “Fear of New Pronouns” insidehighered.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.223.135.155 (talk) 17:45, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

There's in-depth documentation for some of these forms in the 1981 journal article "The Epicene Pronoun: The Word That Failed", for example here: [5] -- Beland (talk) 14:00, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

I have included ae in the table with a source. Do you support this? -- Evertype·✆ 20:43, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

moved

After yet another complaint at Wikiproject linguistics that this article was an incoherent mishmash, I moved it to Gender neutrality in languages with gendered third-person pronouns. I see that it was moved to 'third-person pronoun' in 2017, but that was never the topic of the article. There may be better titles, but that was the main topic. Then deleted the stuff that didn't fit, which was just a mishmash of trivia. The remaining sections are on English, Swedish, a tidbit about Norwegian, and the opposite trend in CJK to translate Western lit (which hadn't even been mentioned in the intro).

If this article actually is supposed to be about third-person pronouns in general, then all the stuff about gender-neutral pronouns in English needs to be removed per WEIGHT. But that seemed to be the point of having this article, with most of the rest just cruft that accreted over time due to poor quality control. — kwami (talk) 19:19, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

P.S. If the topic is to be 3rd-person pronouns, there's a lot of material to cover, including demonstratives. But for the most part there seems to be little reason to split 3rd person off the other articles on pronouns. — kwami (talk) 19:28, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

pronoun cases of "er" and "hoo"

I have looked around, and I was hoping to add "hoo" to the table, but I cannot find anywhere an objective form of the pronoun. "er" I don't know where to find either. It isn't anywhere I can get any info on reflexive or possessive, or anything. 2607:F5F0:110:1:0:0:0:17 (talk) 01:41, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Ae

I just came across the pronoun "ae/aer/aerself" in David Lindsay's 1920 novel Voyage to Arcturus (section 2906 of 4321 in the Kindle edition, chapter Leehallfee). Should this be added to the list. Admittedly it is in a rather special context (ancient sexless humanoid alien) so I didn't want to edit the main page without hearing your views. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Peter grenholm (talk • contribs) 09:47, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

I did add this to the article, with reference to the book, A Voyage to Arcturus. Mathglot reverted it saying it was "unsourced". But it was sourced—that novel is the source. I can give a bibliographical reference, or chapter or page numbers if necessary, but the source is that novel, and that was referenced in my edits. I undid the revert, and asked the reverter to come here and discuss it. -- Evertype·✆ 20:08, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
First Mathglot reverted this saying "unsourced" and then when a source was provided Mathglot reverted it saying it was trivia. Science fiction is not trivia. It is noteworthy that a writer conceived of this in 1920, a century ago this year. Lindsay's novel is not obscure either. Both J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis admired it. Mathglot should bring his concerns to the Talk page, and not just find reasons to delete something Mathglot does not like. -- Evertype·✆ 20:42, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
@Evertype:, That is an invalid source, and I've removed it again. You cannot use a primary source to support a neologism that is not present in any grammar of English. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of trivia, nor of every time some author invents a word. For all we know, "ae" was a publisher typo, and "af" was intended. We have no independent source that says that this "word" even exists, let alone that it is representative of a genderless pronoun in English. This is original research that needs to come out, as are many of the other words in this article.
Wikipedia's core WP:Verfiability policy says that "Any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting it may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source." I am now issuing this formal WP:CHALLENGE per this policy: any editor wishing to add this material back to the article may do so, but not without conforming to the requirements of Wikipedia's core principle of WP:Verifiability, including the requirement for a citation to an independent, reliable, secondary source. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 17:31, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
Mathglot, [1] and [2] both support "ae" pronouns. Gbear605 (talk) 01:16, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
@Gbear605: thanks for listing those. By footnote number:
  1. The only mention of it is in a single sentence, and only to point out that it hasn't gained widespread adoption. The list of neologisms that *don't* make it must be endless.
  2. No author, date, publication, or any indication that this might be a reliable source, rather than someone's personal, unsigned, reflection.
I tried Google Scholar, and found one source (Barnsley, 2013) that is a doctoral thesis but appears to use it as a neologism, and in a pretty wacky way,[a] but other than that, not much. I just don't see how you can make the case that this is a real pronoun in English, recognized by reliable sources. Conceivably, if we could get another reference or two saying that it *hasn't* been adopted, we could create a section on "Pronoun neologisms" in the article, and list the "also-rans" that didn't make it. Separating them out from the main section, might be a way to keep some mention of them, rather than delete them entirely. My personal preference would be to delete them, as I think it's indiscriminate trivia and non-encyclopedic, but let's see where this conversation goes. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 03:33, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2019/08/13/gender-pronouns-jane-roper
  2. ^ https://rainbowcenter.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2262/2018/08/Gender-and-Pronoun-Guide-1.pdf

  1. ^ Quotation: "Since GOD/DE is not a material person, but One who transcends all matter, I instead employ a set of pronouns specific to ÆR8 alone, using the ligature ‗Æ‘ to represent ÆR as Creator and Sustainer conjointly of All matter in its entirety and of Each and Every material thing in its specificity. And in my deployment of capitalisation, I seek to signify that GOD/DE exceeds both my thinking and this text in infinite degree."

"Neopronoun" redirects here, but the word is neither used nor defined

2A00:23C5:FE0C:2100:813:B949:960D:D93C (talk) 21:19, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

If neopronouns are pronouns that are newly inroduced into a language I doubt there is a straightforward relationship between neopronouns and gender neutrality. When the English borrowed the prounoun that has become they from Old Norse in the 1200s that didn't coincide with a neutralisation of a gender contrast. For although it was the pluralised cognate hīe/hī of present-day he that was replaced, a pluralised cognate of present-day she had not been in use; hīe/hī was the only plural pronoun option for all genders.
Some indigenous Latin American languages even seem to have introduced a gender contrast when they borrowed personal pronouns from Spanish or Portuguese, and written Standard Chinese is reported to have adopted the 他~她~它 ('he~she~it') contrast from European languages. In spoken Standard Chinese the three are still the same, namely tā [tʰa˥]. (In earlier Modern Standard Chinese literature 祂 tā was also used, and that corresponded to European capitalised He referring to God.) Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 05:26, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

"informally" singular they

The lead section currently states:

The English pronoun they [can refer] informally, to a singular antecedent that refers to a person of either or unknown gender, the "singular they".

I might be misunderstanding the phrasing – which is a little verbose – and use of the word "informally" but surely this sentence is erroneous? The singular they is certainly used formally and, at least in British English, is considered perfectly acceptable English (as outlined in the Singular they article). LittleDwangs (talk) 23:14, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Neopronoun

Neopronoun and neopronouns redirect here, but the word is not used anywhere in the article. Should we take a stab at adding a sentence or two on this somewhere? Or should I WP:RFD the redirects? Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:52, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

'em, yo

In this table, do 'em and yo deserve the same weight as the much more common and orthodox pronouns he, she, it, one, and they? Maybe we should give 'em and yo their own category. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:51, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Isn't 'em (short for "them") just a colloquialism or something? It's not a true pronoun. "Yo" shouldn't be there either. Crossroads -talk- 06:21, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Title too long

I’m sorry but a title like Gender neutrality in languages with gendered third-person pronouns

Is just too long for an encyclopedia. Can we shorten the title down a bit.CycoMa (talk) 06:21, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

It's only too long if it is not concise. And there is nothing that can be removed from it, IMO. 1. "Gender neutrality": obviously needed. 2. "in languages": this not about a specific language, so there must be a nominal head. 3. "with gendered third-person pronouns": this is the qualifier that defines the topic, and cannot be further shortened, I guess. If we leave the last one out, then people will start adding data again from languages which simply lack gender. Calling these languages (like Finnish, Turkish, Tagalog) "gender-neutral" is an Indo-European-normative POV which is not adequate for an encyclopedia. The article used to be called "Third-person pronoun", but mainly covered the topic as defined now, plus lots of random coatracking. The current precision of the title really helps to keep random inflation away. –Austronesier (talk) 08:30, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
I can’t improve on Austronesier’s explanation. Also, see Cneoridium dumosum (Nuttall) Hooker F. Collected March 26, 1960, at an Elevation of about 1450 Meters on Cerro Quemazón, 15 Miles South of Bahía de Los Angeles, Baja California, México, Apparently for a Southeastward Range Extension of Some 140 Miles, which possibly fails CONCISE. Cheers, Mathglot (talk) 13:35, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
Come to think of it: what about dropping "third-person"? In its current scope, the article is only about third person, but might as well include issues with gendered second-person pronouns (e.g. in Semitic languages). I have no idea about any existing lit, but adding something about it clearly would more of an enrichment for this article than another piece of ephemeral cruft in The Table. –Austronesier (talk) 09:55, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Prevalence of gender-specific pronouns needs cite

The article originally said that "many of the world's languages do not have gender-specific pronouns", and a recent edit qualified that as "about half". Unfortunately, the citations don't support either statement.

The "about half" note cited [6], which says that about half of languages do not have grammatical gender. It does not discuss how many languages have gender-specific pronouns; in fact, the word "pronoun" does not appear in the article. Because this note is apparently the result of a misunderstanding of the article cited, I've removed it.

The cite at the end of the paragraph does discuss gender-specific pronouns, but it is about languages that have gender-specific pronouns and do not have grammatical gender - English being the obvious example. It does not appear to discuss the prevalence of languages with grammatical gender, which presumably also tend to have gender-specific pronouns. I've left the paragraph in, but I've marked the "Many" phrase as citation-needed.

Jordan Brown (talk) 00:14, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

@Jordan Brown: I have added a better source for that statement (available online here: [7]). Is 254 out of 378 many or most? –Austronesier (talk) 13:31, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
Looks good to me, thanks. Jordan Brown (talk) 13:56, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
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