The ever-controversial pronoun ‘hen’ has won its battle and is set to officially become part of the Swedish language.
In April 2015 the Swedish Academy will release its dictionary, Svenska Akademiens ordlista, or SAOL. And ‘hen’, a pronoun with no gender, will be in it.
Sven-Göran Malmgren, editor in chief of the SAOL, admitted that the Academy was hesitant to add ‘hen’ to the list, and the debate took several years.
“We wanted to make sure it wasn’t just a fad,” Malmgren told Sveriges Radio. “But now it’s quite simple. It is a word which is in use and it is a word which without a doubt fills a function.”
The pronoun sparked massive debate when a publisher decided to use it in a children’s book where ‘hen’ replaced ‘hon’ (she) and ‘han’ (he).
But others have argued that ‘hen’ is not meant to replace gendered pronouns. Instead, it allows speakers to refer to a person without having to mention the gender if they don’t know it, if the person is transgender, or if the information is considered irrelevant.
The word as presented in the Academy’s dictionary will have two uses: First, for instances when gender is unknown or irrelevant, and second, as a third gender. More.
See: The Local
See also: “Hen” is official now
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United States
Local time: 02:38
German to English
In this day and age of transgender, transsexual, transsurgical, unisex, metrosex... it's about time! And it's not as awkward as s/he. What could we do in English?
Norway
Local time: 11:38
Member (2002)
English to Norwegian
+ ...
in a university textbook on sociolinguistics in Swedish. So it's taken about the average amount of time for it to become a dictionary term.
(though, compared with "selfie" - an enormity)
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:38
Hebrew to English
What could we do in English?
Singular 'they' is perfectly natural English, but people have an irrational aversion to it.
Japan
Local time: 18:38
Japanese to English
+ ...
What could we do in English?
Singular 'they' is perfectly natural English, but people have an irrational aversion to it.
It's also perfectly natural to say something like, "Me and her went to the store," but I wouldn't necessarily want to write it in a translation.
As long as there is one person left out there who thinks that the singular use of "they" is grammatically incorrect, it seems dangerous to use it in your writing if you don't know exactly who your audience will be. Although I can't imagine a client bringing it up as an issue, unless they provided you with a style guide that forbade it. Oops.
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