Gender-specific and gender-neutral pronouns

A third-person pronoun is a pronoun that refers to an entity other than the speaker or listener. The English pronouns he and she are gender-specific third-person personal pronouns. He and she are sometimes referred to as binary pronouns. The English pronoun they is an epicene (gender-neutral) third-person pronoun that can refer to plural antecedents of any gender and, under certain circumstances, to a singular antecedent that refers to a male or female (but not inanimate) entity.

Many of the world's languages do not have gender-specific pronouns. Others, however – particularly those that have a system of grammatical gender (or have historically had such a system, as with English) – have gender specificity in certain of their pronouns, particularly third-person personal pronouns.

Problems of usage arise in languages such as English, in contexts where a person of unspecified or unknown (social) gender is being referred to but commonly available pronouns (he or she) are gender-specific. In such cases a gender-specific, usually masculine, pronoun was traditionally used with a purported gender-neutral meaning; such use of "he" was also common in English until the latter half of the 20th century but some regard it as outmoded or sexist. Use of singular they is another common alternative, but is not universally accepted and regarded by some to be grammatically incorrect.

Pronouns such as who and which are not discussed here, though similar but different consideration may apply to them.

Some languages of the world (including Austronesian languages, many East Asian languages, the Quechuan languages, and the Uralic languages) do not have gender distinctions in personal pronouns, just as most of them lack any system of grammatical gender. In others, such as many of the Niger–Congo languages, there is a system of grammatical gender (or noun classes), but the divisions are not based on sex. Pronouns in these languages tend to be naturally gender-neutral.

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