Sweden will make a gender-neutral pronoun official by adding it to the dictionary
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25 March 2015
Sweden has long been progressive on gender egalitarianism, and now its language is officially catching up. A gender-neutral pronoun, henwill join its binary counterparts han (he) and hon (she) in the new edition of Sweden’s official dictionary, helping Swedish speakers avoid the sort of linguistic gymnastics common in languages without a gender-neutral alternative.
Efficient in a variety of situations, hen, as AFP notes, can be used when you don’t know the gender identity of the person in question, when the person is transgender, when you don’t want to reveal a gender identity, or when gender identity simply seems irrelevant in context.