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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheCosmicKid" data-source="post: 7443374" data-attributes="member: 6683613">If the claim is that the generic "he" was imported to English from Latin, then it seems like a relevant fact that it was present in Old English long before these modern grammarians began their alleged meddling."I accuse Miss Scarlet of killing Mr. Boddy last night!""Mr. Boddy has been dead for three years..."While certainly there can be horrendously biased works hiding behind a pseudo-objective tone, I find (and psychologists agree) that we tend to move towards what we pretend to be. Pretend to be angry and you'll make yourself angry; pretend to be calm and you make yourself calm. Wear your bias on your sleeve and you'll make yourself more biased; aspire to objectivity and, even though you'll never be perfect, you will get better at it.Old English did have a neuter singular pronoun. The same neuter singular pronoun that would evolve into the modern English neuter singular pronoun "it", and with the same non-person connotation.Not sure who compiled that table on Wikipedia, but it's incomplete. That's the paradigm for masculine plurals you see. Wikipedia's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_grammar#Pronouns" target="_blank">other table</a> shows the feminine plurals. Because of the "generic he" rule, masculine plurals were used for mixed and neuter groups, so that could be one reason for the omission of the feminine forms.It is interesting that you should mention genderless plurals mirroring the feminine singular paradigm, though, because that's exactly what happens in German.</blockquote>

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