This ‘a’ is a reduced form of the Anglo-Saxon he = ‘he’ and heo = ‘she’.” Some living British dialects still use the gender-neutral 'a' pronoun.

Marshall records Middle English epicene ‘a’, used by the 14th century English writer John of Trevisa and both the OED and Wright's English Dialect Dictionary confirm the use of ‘a’ for he, she, it, they, and even I. Although it's easy to make up more forms for these pronouns (such as inventing 'ouself' ), this is not what linguists have recorded in use.Ī (nominative form only). For this reason, these three sets of native English pronouns are listed separately from the other pronouns on this page that have complete forms. It's possible that these three sets of pronouns may not actually have other forms (possessive, reflexive, etc). One curious thing that a, ou, and yo all have in common is that they have only been recorded in their nominative form. There have been some native English dialects that have their own gender-neutral pronouns, such as a, ou, and yo. Prescriptive grammarians of the late eighteenth century instead recommended using 'he' as a gender-neutral pronoun when one is needed, instead of 'singular they.' However, 'gender-neutral he' results in writings that are unclear about whether they mean only men or not, which makes problems in law. However, prescriptive grammarians in the late eighteenth century decided that it was bad grammar because it works like a plural and because it isn't done in Latin.

The use of singular they as a gender-neutral pronoun has been documented as standard usage in English throughout the past thousand years. For example, she for women, and he for men.

In English, people are usually called by a pronoun that implies their gender.

What are neo pronouns