What are your pronouns? In English, the most common answers are “he” or “she”. But a growing number of people identify as neither male nor female, and ask to be referred to with novel pronouns. “They” is by far the most common of these. In English, the linguistic adjustments required to accommodate non-binary people are relatively limited. For gendered languages, gender-neutral options are a bigger problem. How do languages handle non-binary people? Inclusive terms and grammar are easier to craft in some languages than others.
Gendered languages through history
Movements to make gendered languages less sexist have existed for years. Many languages have a “default masculine”, where a generic (say) student or professor is given masculine gender and mixed groups are referred to with masculine adjectives. Efforts to promote change in different countries are sparking opposition from linguistic conservatives. Berlin’s mayor recently said he would refuse to sign documents using new plural endings designed to include both women and men. Germany’s main opposition leader has claimed that such language is driving voters to the far right.
More than two languages?
The push to accommodate non-binary people has in some cases piggybacked on these earlier campaigns for gender neutrality. Nearly all European languages (descended from a common ancestor) have two or three genders, and the “neuter” gender is not normally used for humans. French uses the interpunct, a kind of floating dot, to insert the feminine ending into the generic masculine: prêt·e·s means “ready”, and is intended to include both men and women and, presumably, those who identify as neither. But it is pronounced identically to prêts, the masculine word. As in German, no easy alternative has emerged.
Gender neutral pronouns
Spanish activists have found a more elegant fix. They use -e endings on nouns and adjectives, in contrast to the usual -o (masculine) and -a (feminine); the pronoun elle resembles él (he) and ella (she) and is used by some non-binary people. In Swedish han (he) and hon (she) have been joined by hen. It serves for both non-binary people and as the gender-neutral pronoun in sentences like “If a customer has a complaint they should put it in writing.” It was coined decades ago, but came to prominence after it was used in a children’s book in 2012. Data show that in 2018 it was about one-hundredth as frequent as han and hon put together, on an upward trend from previous years.
Some languages handle non-binary people by accommodating them. Many—including Estonian, Chinese and Hungarian—have one word that means both “he” and “she”. Still, there can be wrinkles. In Mandarin the word tā is written using different characters for “he” (他) and “she” (她). They differ in the “radical” element, the part of the character that carries the general area of meaning: “he” has a “person” radical, while “she” has a “woman” radical. Some non-binary people have begun using a roman-alphabet TA or X in place of that radical, next to the remainder of the character. Others have tried to craft new Chinese-style characters. But the People’s Republic, which has little time for transgender rights, is cold to any such ideas. If linguistic accommodations for non-binary people are to catch on, they must be used by large numbers of people, such that they become commonplace—and it helps a great deal if they are easy to say.