Gender-neutral pronoun 'hen' enters Swedish dictionary

[Olivia P]

 July 30, 2014 13:09

The groundbreaking gender-neutral pronoun "hen" is set to be included into the new Swedish dictionary, compiled by the country's Academy, in 2015.

The editor-in-chief of the Academy said they had thought about adding "hen," with the debate over the pronoun having taken a few years, The Local reported.

"We wanted to make sure it wasn't just a fad," Sven-Göran Malmgren told Sveriges Radio.

"But now it's quite simple. It is a word which is in use and it is a word which, without a doubt, fulfills a function," he added.

More: http://rt.com/news/176692-neutral-gender-sweden-dictionary/

[Shana-chan]

Yeah, I'm sorry no disrespect to anyone but "hen" doesn't really sound or look too gender neutral. I mean it LITTERALLY has the male pronoun in it, "he" and if I added and r to it it'd spell hern. Coming up with a gender neutral pronoun I welcome, but it SHOULDN'T include any other male/female pronoun in the name/spelling of the name. This is my opinion at least.

[Eris]

In Scotland this is already a way of referring to a woman (usually by the older generation).
It's a female chicken...

[Lonicera]

Yeah, I'm sorry no disrespect to anyone but "hen" doesn't really sound or look too gender neutral. I mean it LITTERALLY has the male pronoun in it, "he" and if I added and r to it it'd spell hern. Coming up with a gender neutral pronoun I welcome, but it SHOULDN'T include any other male/female pronoun in the name/spelling of the name. This is my opinion at least.

Doesn't the article say that Swedish pronouns are usually 'han' and 'hon'? If that's the case then each contains as much of 'hen' as the other, so wouldn't that prevent the neutral pronoun from being biased towards one particular gender or another? Although, if I remember rightly Swedish also has hennes and henne so I'm not sure how that works with hen...

As for English, I'm not sure if any non-binary people would object to it but singular they seems to be increasingly popular for encompassing all genders in texts.