Awareness
Every year, on the third Wednesday of October, we recognize International Pronouns Day. Today, we celebrate the beautiful ways that language shapes our experiences and reflects on how language belongs to us all, and we all have a right to use it however we see fit. International Pronouns Day was first recognized in 2018 and is commemorated by participating in grassroots organizations that seek to uplift the voices of trans and non-binary folks, as well as educating them on the topic of pronouns and just how crucial they truly are to our language.
‘Pronouns’ refer to any word that can replace a noun, which means they can be used to refer to anything from objects, animals, and of course, people. Nearly all languages around the world use pronouns that are crucial features in their grammar and vocabulary, although these pronouns often differ in many ways. Different languages have different notions as to the gender or lack thereof concerning their pronouns, while Japanese, for instance, uses pronouns far less frequently than other languages.
Among language families, it tends to be those who use ‘grammatical gender’ that also use gendered pronouns. Romance languages, for instance, assign genders to all nouns—not just living things, but objects and places as well—and thus contain grammatical gender. Most other Indo-European languages and Afro-Asiatic languages likewise have a system of grammatical gender and thus have gendered pronouns, but a few outliers to this pattern do exist. English, for example, doesn’t see a chair as feminine (as Spanish does) but does still use grammatical pronouns—he/him and she/her—even without a system of grammatical gender.
Many languages do not contain any gendered pronouns at all. The majority of Austronesian, East-Asian, Uralic, Quechuan languages, and many more, all fall into this category. Most of them likewise do not contain any sort of grammatical gender. Niger-Congo languages also fall into a similar pattern; pronouns in these languages are separated by classifications, but these do not include gender or sex. In Swahili, for example, the pronoun yeye can be used to refer to any gender, but the classification it has makes it clear that it is referring to a living being, and not any sort of object or place.
Regardless of whether a language uses gendered pronouns or not, however, there will always be a need for pronouns that work beyond the binary. Non-binary folks and others who need such language exist all over the world and speak all sorts of languages, so gender-affirming pronouns will always be needed in any language that doesn’t provide them. English has a wide array of these linguistic devices; the most common third-person gender-neutral pronouns are they/them—which have been used in a singular sense since 1375! —but many people use neo-pronouns either with or instead of that particular set. These neo-pronouns might be a little younger, but they’re an amazing display of how malleable and freeing language can be—if there isn’t a word or bit of grammar that fits your needs, make one up!
This vast expansion of language is by no means contained to English. Languages all over the world are developing new and exciting ways to include people no matter how they identify. In Spanish, the gender-neutral pronoun elle (a combination of él and ella) has been widely adopted around the globe, while German speakers have begun to use either sier or xier and Portuguese now uses elu as a third option. The rise of gender-neutral pronouns in French, meanwhile, actually owes much to Canada. While the history of iel (the most widely known French gender-neutral pronoun) can be traced back to the early 2010s, it was a group of doctoral students lobbying for its standard usage at the Université du Québec à Montréal in 2018 that truly set things in motion.
While there’s been much debate about ‘grammatical propriety’ since, including from government agencies at the provincial and federal level, the addition of iel to the Petit Robert online dictionary in October 2021 shows proof of positive change. It’s another meaningful step taken towards francophone non-binary folks feeling more comfortable in their language, and the debates have been far less polarizing in Canada when compared to France, where the fight for language that’s inclusive of everyone is still a very present battle.
International Pronouns Day serves as a great opportunity to learn about all these amazing ways language can include everyone, as well as a reminder that language’s very purpose is to do exactly that. The idea of language having ‘rules’ set in stone, never to be changed, is antithetical to the very meaning of language. The only reason we communicate the way we do today is because language evolved, and it will continue to do so for as long as anyone is around to use it. Gender-neutral pronouns are merely the latest in a long line of evolutions to the way we communicate, and they’re a truly beautiful addition indeed.
