A personal pronoun is a form of speech that stands in for a person or group of people. A 2019 Pew Research study found already that one in five Americans knew someone who uses nonbinary pronouns. And then there are neopronouns. A neopronoun can be a word a created to serve as pronoun without expressing gender, like “ze” and “zir.”A neopronoun can also be a so-called “noun-self pronoun,” in which a pre-existing word is drafted into use as a pronoun. Noun-self pronouns can refer to animals — so your pronouns can be “bun/bunself” and “kitten/kittenself.” Others refer to fantasy characters — “vamp/vampself,” “prin/cess/princesself,” “fae/faer/faeself” — or even just common slang, like “Innit/Innits/Innitself.”

Source: New York Times April 08, 2021 16:18 UTC