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Why doesn't English have a gender nuetral pronuon for a person?

N

notfred

Lifer
We have "he" and "she", which are fine, but we need one that's not gender specific, right now, if we want to refer to someone whose gender we don't know (the author of something we read, or the driver of another car on the road) we have to use "he or she", which is just long and awkward. So, as a consequence, we often end up using "they", as it's gender neutral. However, it refers to more than a single person.

Consider the following example:

You're driving at night, the car in front of you is swerving all over the road:

You say, "Wow, he's all over the road!" Which is correct, if the driver is a man, which you don't know.

Since you don't know this, you SHOULD say, "Wow, he or she is all over the road!" However, that sounds stupid, and no one uses it.

So, most likely you say, "Wow, they're all over the road!" Which is wrong, unless there are actually two people driving the car.

We should have a pronoun that's gender neutral and only refers to one person.

 
Females weren't considered important enough to make an exception. Just like in many languages a group of people with at least one man in it will be addressed as being male.
 
Originally posted by: Skyclad1uhm1
Females weren't considered important enough to make an exception. Just like in many languages a group of people with at least one man in it will be addressed as being male.
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Maybe so, but the language evolves, we could add one, and could have any time in the past several hundred years.
 
why bother adding one when everybody now says they instead of a gender neutral word? i mean its not that big a deal and they or they're is just another syllable. it would also be hard ot break the habit of all the current english speaking people and it wouldnt change until an entire generation spoke that way and were taught that way. so its pointless to bother when it really sint a big deal
 
Originally posted by: notfred
We have "he" and "she", which are fine, but we need one that's not gender specific, right now, if we want to refer to someone whose gender we don't know (the author of something we read, or the driver of another car on the road) we have to use "he or she", which is just long and awkward. So, as a consequence, we often end up using "they", as it's gender neutral. However, it refers to more than a single person.

Consider the following example:

You're driving at night, the car in front of you is swerving all over the road:

You say, "Wow, he's all over the road!" Which is correct, if the driver is a man, which you don't know.

Since you don't know this, you SHOULD say, "Wow, he or she is all over the road!" However, that sounds stupid, and no one uses it.

So, most likely you say, "Wow, they're all over the road!" Which is wrong, unless there are actually two people driving the car.

We should have a pronoun that's gender neutral and only refers to one person.
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How about saying "Wow, that car's all over the road." How do you know someone is driving that car, I seen dogs driving cars. Yep sure did, it was on TV. 🙂

KK
 
I try to use "one" if possible.. :\

"Wow, he's all over the road!" could be "Wow, that one's all over the road!"
 
English has a neuter pronoun for the 3rd-person singular. It's called "it," and (like most other languages that also have one of these) it's considered insulting to use when speaking about other humans.

edit: when gender is unknown, it is proper English to use the masculine (as in "he"). For example, the phrase is not "to each their own" but "to each his own." I really fail to see how this is insulting, insensitive or offensive. At least English doesn't give gender to the sun and the moon and everything else the way Spanish does.
 
Originally posted by: Vic
English has a neuter pronoun for the 3rd-person singular. It's called "it," and (like most other languages that also have one of these) it's considered insulting to use when speaking about other humans.
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agree.
 
Originally posted by: Vic
English has a neuter pronoun for the 3rd-person singular. It's called "it," and (like most other languages that also have one of these) it's considered insulting to use when speaking about other humans.
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If you'll notice the title of the thread, I said that I was looking for a pronoun that refers to a person.
 
Originally posted by: notfred
If you'll notice the title of the thread, I said that I was looking for a pronoun that refers to a person.
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I understand what you are looking for. It doesn't exist because it is considered insulting. Humans can (barely) accept being mentioned as the wrong gender, but to be referred to directly as sexless is completely unacceptable.

 
edit: when gender is unknown, it is proper English to use the masculine (as in "he"). For example, the phrase is not "to each their own" but "to each his own." I really fail to see how this is insulting, insensitive or offensive. At least English doesn't give gender to the sun and the moon and everything else the way Spanish does.
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Exactly. While I have always known that when gender is unknown or the statement is inclusive of both genders, "he" is a proper and accepted universal pronoun, the damned politically correct and/or feminist movement has given me a guilt complex about using it because I don't want to 'offend' the women folks. Blah...
 
Finnish is the other way around. There are no gender-specific pronouns, we just have "hän", which is gender-neutral.
 
Isn't the answer in the title?

"That person is all over the road"

but you could also have:

"Look at that, they are all over the road"
 
my sister's english teacher proposed just such a word, It sounded really lame, but I agreed with the idea behind it. I think he wanted "thim" or something like that.
 
Just be glad you are not in Russia, where nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjective, inanimate objects are all assigned genders. There are also 3 genders, male, female and neutral.
 
A similar problem is the issue of someone's title.

Mr.
Mrs.
Miss
Ms.
Dr.
Sir
Rev.
Master

(Master, I believe, is short for "Young Master", and denotes that the person addressed is a male child.)

There is no generic title for a person. All of these differentiate people based on sex, marital status, social status, or education. In a scifi novel I read some years back, the title "Ser" was introduced to fill that percieved need in the English language, to provide a formal way of addressing someone without having to differentiate sex (useful if gender is indeterminate or complex).
 
If the car is driving slowly and overcautiously the correct pronoun is She.

It the car is driving like a normal person, the correct pronoun is HE.
 
Originally posted by: Vic
English has a neuter pronoun for the 3rd-person singular. It's called "it," and (like most other languages that also have one of these) it's considered insulting to use when speaking about other humans.

edit: when gender is unknown, it is proper English to use the masculine (as in "he"). For example, the phrase is not "to each their own" but "to each his own." I really fail to see how this is insulting, insensitive or offensive. At least English doesn't give gender to the sun and the moon and everything else the way Spanish does.
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Vic is correct. We've become such a frickin politically correct country that using the masculine is now wrong.
 
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