Sick of 'he or she', 'he/she', 's/he" etc - or whatever the equivalent is in your language? Well, according to
this article (in Danish), some Swedes have now invented and are using a new form,
hen, which is neither
han ('he') nor
hon ('she'). Apparently it's popular among young Swedes, and there are even a couple of books that use it.
Of course, in some languages it's simply not an issue. For instance, Finnish only has hän, which means either 'he' or 'she'. (This is no less confusing than, say, for a Frenchman learning that English only has 'they' instead of ils and elles.)
So will it catch on? Who knows. Compliance with new prescriptivist language conventions is not actually unheard of in Sweden. For instance, about a century ago people suddenly started pronouncing the written 'd' on the ends of words such as hund ('dog').
(I read about that once in a book about Scandinavian linguistics, but I don't have it to hand, I'm afraid, and nor can I remember the reason why they started to pronounce the letter. I believe the book was by Vikner, if that helps!)
English, of course, already has a centuries old method of avoiding sexism or identifying gender by using the third person plural as the singular 'they'. I use it a lot. It's just such a pity that some people look down on it, as it's so useful, eg:
"I saw someone get off the bus at that stop. I have no idea if it was a man or a woman, but they were wearing a yellow jumper."
Nice and easy!
