Hen (pronoun)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Hen (Template:IPA-sv) is a gender-neutral personal pronoun in Swedish intended as an alternative 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 first proposed in 1966, and again in 1994, with reference to the Finnish hän, a personal pronoun that is gender-neutral, since Finnish does not have grammatical genders. However, it did not receive widespread recognition until around 2010, when it began to be used in some books, magazines and newspapers, and provoked media debates and controversy over feminism, gender neutrality, and parenting. In July 2014 it was announced that hen would be included in Svenska Akademiens ordlista, the official glossary of the Swedish Academy.
See also
- Spivak pronoun
- Gender-neutral language
- Gender-neutral pronoun
- Feminist language planning
- Lavender linguistics
