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In literary style, 其 (qí) is sometimes used for "his" or "her" or as a gender-neutral pronoun; e.g. 其父 means "his father" or "her father". In Cantonese, for possessive, 嘅 (ge3) is appended to the pronoun. It is used in the same way as 的 in Mandarin. In Taiwanese Hokkien, possessive pronouns are homophonous with plural pronouns.
This system of gender is quite minimal compared to languages with grammatical gender. [10] Historically, "he" referred to a generic person whose gender is unspecified in formal language, but the gender-neutral singular they has long [11] [12] [13] been common in informal language, and is becoming increasingly so in formal language. [14]
Since at least the 19th century, numerous proposals for the use of other non-standard gender-neutral pronouns have been introduced: e, (es, em) is the oldest recorded English gender-neutral (ungendered) pronoun with declension, coined by Francis Augustus Brewster in 1841. [75] E, es, em, and emself were also proposed by James Rogers in 1890. [76]
Many Australian languages have a system of gender superclassing in which membership in one gender can mean membership in another. [15] Worrorra: Masculine, feminine, terrestrial, celestial, and collective. [16] Halegannada: Originally had 9 gender pronouns but only 3 exist in present-day Kannada. Zande: Masculine, feminine, animate, and inanimate.
The notion of a "genderless language" is distinct from that of gender-neutral language, which is neutral with regard to natural gender. A discourse in a genderless language does not need to be gender-neutral [ 1 ] (although genderless languages exclude many possibilities for reinforcement of gender-related stereotypes ); similarly, a gender ...
Gender-neutral language or gender-inclusive language is language that avoids reference towards a particular sex or gender. In English, this includes use of nouns that are not gender-specific to refer to roles or professions, [1] formation of phrases in a coequal manner, and discontinuing the collective use of male or female terms. [2]
Gender neutrality (adjective form: gender-neutral), also known as gender-neutralism or the gender neutrality movement, is the idea that policies, language, and other social institutions (social structures or gender roles) [1] should avoid distinguishing roles according to people's sex or gender.
Languages with grammatical gender, such as French, German, Greek, and Spanish, present unique challenges when it comes to creating gender-neutral language.Unlike genderless languages like English, constructing a gender-neutral sentence can be difficult or impossible in these languages due to the use of gendered nouns and pronouns.