Sweden is already well known for its incredible gender equality and now, those who have been pushing for gender neutrality have got their wish. The Swedish language now has a gender-neutral pronoun, “hen.”
Back in July 2014, TheLocal.se reported that the Swedish Academy agreed to add “hen” to the new edition of the dictionary Svenska Akademiens ordlista, which will be published in April. The AFP reported again this week that “hen” will officially be added to the dictionary as one of 13,000 new words.
“For those who use the pronoun, it’s obviously a strength that it is now in the dictionary,” dictionary editor Sture Berg told the AFP.
“Hen” will join the other pronouns - “han” (he) and “hon” (she). There has actually been attempts to get it widely used dating back to the 1960s, but that didn’t work. It was revived in the 2000s, as the transgender community in Sweden began using it.
As The Independent points out, the English language could use a “han.” It would certainly be helpful for anyone who doesn’t like using “it” to describe a person.
The Swedish Academy’s new dictionary hits stores on April 15.
There has been a critical error on your website.<\/p>
Learn more about debugging in WordPress.<\/a><\/p>","data":{"status":500},"additional_errors":[]}