Saturday, July 21, 2007

English

In English:

* The gender-specific pronouns are the personal pronouns of the third-person singular: 'he'/'him'/'himself'/'his' (for male persons or possessors), 'she'/'her'/'herself'/'hers' (for female persons or possessors), and 'it'/'itself'/'its' (for neither).
* The third-person plural pronouns 'they', 'them', 'themselves', 'their', and 'theirs' work equally well for either sex and are androgynous.

A speaker may not know or may want to avoid specifying a person's gender. Traditionally, when one wishes to refer to a single definite person androgynously with a pronoun in the third person, the masculine pronoun is used. Some people have begun to challenge this tradition, however, usually by resorting to plural pronouns such as 'they', 'them' and 'their' for singular uses. This is called the singular 'they'.

Other common solutions include the generic 'she', 'one', the generic 'you', circumlocutions such as 'he or she', or using 'he' and 'she' in alternate passages, and rewording sentences to avoid pronouns. (See pronoun game.

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