[…] In the last months two favourable changes in this field have occurred: First, the Swedish neutral pronoun “hen”. In second place, the much talked of, although not yet official, “Mx” to use alongside “Mr” and “Ms”.

“Hen”, the new Swedish neutral pronoun

The dictionary of Swedish language is adding “hen” as one of the 13,000 new words. This is a gender-neutral pronoun used for objects and people instead of “hon” (she) and “han” (he). It has been included for being used by transgender people who prefer identifying themselves as belonging to a third gender or non-gender and for people who don‘t want to reveal their gender, either because they think that it is irrelevant information or because they reject the division of male/female gender roles.

There are others who consider it also as a way to economise language, since it allows us to use inclusive language with only one word, avoiding the sometimes untidy and more complex form “she/he”.

“Mx”, the gender neutral title

The Oxford English Dictionary is considering including this neutral-gender honorific to be used alongside Mrs, Mr, and Miss. This will represent the most significant addition to the official list of honorifics in the last years. Although it hasn‘t been included yet in the OED, in English, the term is very popular and there are some institutions and companies that have included it already. One of them is the Brighton and Hove council in Sussex that adopted it on its council forms in 2013 after a vote that gave the support to the big trans* community of Brighton. Also two English bank companies and the Royal Mail introduced the term given the requests from customers. More.

See: TermCoord

Related Translation News posts:

• Sweden will make a gender-neutral pronoun official by adding it to the dictionary
• Gender neutral honorific Mx ‘to be included’ in the Oxford English Dictionary alongside Mr, Ms and Mrs and Miss

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