28 October 2015

Towards gender-neutral pronouns in English

The Terminology Coordination (TermCoord) website of the European Commission's DG Trad has posted an article entitled Video fix: Gender neutral pronouns are there, get used to them!* complete with a video entitled Gender Neutral Pronouns: They're Here, Get Used to Them by Tom Scott, a British ‘geek’ comedian, linguist and programmer.

Good article and a very good video.

Conclusion
Scott proposes to spread the use of ‘they’ as a neutral singular pronoun in English, considering that ‘it’ is dehumanised. Facebook has started using it, but Shakespeare beat them to it!

If you find this topic interesting, visit our selection of glossaries on gender terminology here.

* Written by Ana Escaso Moreno, Communication Trainee at TermCoord, Journalist & Social Media manager
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