Neopronoun

Neopronouns are are any set of singular third person pronouns that are not officially recognized in the language they are used in, typically created with the intent of being a gender neutral pronoun set.

Historical, regional, and proposed gender-neutral singular pronouns[edit]
Historically, there were two gender-neutral pronouns native to English dialects, ou[pronunciation?] and (h)a. According to Dennis Baron's Grammar and Gender:

Baron goes on to describe how relics of these gender-neutral terms survive in some British dialects of Modern English (for example hoo for "she", in Yorkshire), and sometimes a pronoun of one gender might be applied to a human or non-human animal of the opposite gender. This aforementioned hoo is also sometimes used in the West Midlands and south-west England as a common gender pronoun.

In some West Country dialects, the pronoun er can be used in place of either he or she, although only in weak (unstressed) positions such as in tag questions.

Additionally, in Essex, in the south-east of England, in the Middle English period, the spelling "hye"[pronunciation?] could refer to either he or she.

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.

Various proposals for the use of other non-standard pronouns have been introduced since at least the 19th century.

According to Dennis Baron, the neologism that received the greatest partial mainstream acceptance was Charles Crozat Converse's 1884 proposal of thon,[pronunciation?] a contraction of "that one" (other sources date its coinage to 1858):

"Co"[pronunciation?] was coined by feminist writer Mary Orovan in 1970. "Co" is in common usage in intentional communities of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities, and "co" appears in the bylaws of several of these communities. In addition to use when the gender of the antecedent is unknown or indeterminate, some use it as gender-blind language and always replace gender-specific pronouns.

Several variants of ze[pronunciation?] have been proposed, with different object forms, to meet the need of unspecified gender situations and transgender persons. Kate Bornstein, an American transgender author, used the pronoun forms ze and hir[pronunciation?] in the book "Nearly Roadkill: an Infobahn erotic adventure" in 1996. Jeffrey A. Carver, an American science fiction writer, used the pronoun hir in the novel "From a Changeling Star" for a different-gendered nonhuman, in 1989.

Swedish[edit]
Main article: hen (pronoun)

The Swedish language has 4 grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, reale and neutral, which correspond to the 3rd person forms han, hon, den, det ("he, she, it, it"). The other forms are gender neutral: singular 1st jag, 2nd du, 3rd indefinite/impersonal man, plural 1st vi, 2nd ni, 3rd de. Neutral is characterised by the definite singular article '-t' whereas the rest end with '-n'. The same distinction applies to the indefinite adjectival singular forms. For people and animals with specified gender the masculine or feminine are used. There is no grammatical way to make gender distinction in plural.

In Swedish, the word hen was introduced generally in the 2000s as a complement to the gender-specific hon ("she") and han ("he"). It can be used when the gender of a person is not known or when it is not desirable to specify them as either a "she" or "he". The word was proposed by Rolf Dunås in 1966, and could be used occasionally, like in a guideline from the Swedish building council from 1980, authored by Rolf Reimers. Its origin may have been a combination of han and hon.

It was proposed again in 1994, with reference to the Finnish hän, similarly pronounced, a personal pronoun that is gender-neutral, since Finnish completely lacks grammatical gender. In 2009 it was included in Nationalencyklopedin. However, it did not receive widespread recognition until around 2010, when it began to be used in some texts, and provoked some media debates and controversy, but is included since 2015 in Svenska Akademiens ordlista, the most authoritative glossary of the Swedish language, by the Swedish Academy.

As of 2016, Swedish manuals of style treat "hen" as a neologism. Major newspapers like Dagens Nyheter have recommended against its usage, though some journalists still use it. The Swedish Language Council has not issued any general recommendations against the use of hen, but advises against the use of the object form henom ("her/him"); it instead recommends using hen as both the subject and object form. Hen has two basic usages: as a way to avoid a stated preference to either gender; or as a way of referring to individuals who are transgender, who prefer to identify themselves as belonging to a third gender or who reject the division of male/female gender roles on ideological grounds. Its entry will cover two definitions: as a reference to individual's belonging to an unspecified sex or third gender, or where the sex is not known.

Traditionally, Swedish offers other ways of avoiding using gender-specific pronouns; e.g., "vederbörande" ("the referred person") and "man" ("one", as in "Man borde..."/"One should...") with its objective form "en" or alternatively "en" as both subjective and objective since "man"/"one" sounds the same as "man"/"male adult" although they are discernible through syntax. "Denna/Denne" ("this one or she/he") may refer to a non-gender-specific referent already or soon-to-be mentioned ("Vederbörande kan, om denne så vill,..."/"The referent may, if he wishes,..."). Because "denne" is objectively masculine, the use of the word to refer to anyone irrespective of gender is not recommended. One method is rewriting into the plural, as Swedish – like English – has only gender-neutral pronouns in the plural. Another method is writing the pronoun in the referent's grammatical gender ("Barnet får om det vill."/"The child is allowed to, if it wants to." The word "barn"/child is grammatically neuter, thus the use of the third-person neuter pronoun "det"); some nouns retain their traditional pronouns, e.g., "man"/"man" uses "han"/"he", "kvinna"/"woman" uses "hon"/"she", and "människa"/"human being" uses "hon"/"she". While grammatically correct, using "den/det" to refer to human beings may sound as if the speaker regards the referenced human beings as objects, so "han"/"hon" is preferred, for example about children or work titles such as "föraren"(driver) or "rörmokaren"(plumber).

Norwegian[edit]
In Norwegian, a new word was proposed[weasel words], hin to fill the gap between the third person pronouns hun ('she') and han ('he').[citation needed] Hin is very rarely used, and in limited special interest groups; it is not embraced by society as a whole.[citation needed] A reason for the marginal interest in a neuter gender word is the constructed nature of the word, and that the word is homonymous with several older words both in official language and dialectal speech, such as hin ('the other') and hinsides ('beyond').[citation needed] One can also use man or en or den (en means 'one'). These three are considered impersonal.[citation needed] Amongst LGBT interest groups the word 'hen' is now in use after the Swedish implementation in 2010.[failed verification]

List of neopronouns
See main article: Neopronoun/List