A third-person singular pronoun of unspecified gender; they, thon; alternative to hon (“she”) and han (“he”).
çekim: çoğul henar · tamlayan hens
köken: Created as an alternative to hon (“she”) and han (“he”). The coining of the word has probably been influenced by the Finnish hän, a personal pronoun used about human beings and which does not specify gender (Finnish lacks grammatical gender entirely). Hen was suggested as early as 1966 by linguist Rolf Dunås in Swedish regional newspaper Upsala Nya Tidning and was proposed again in a 1994 article…
I efterhand har hen förstått att det förmodligen har att göra med att hen aldrig riktigt accepterat att det bara skulle finnas två kön.
[…]ska hen få en hund, kan de halvt säkert lova[…]
– En person i personalen som sliter i och skäller på barnen, hotar med stryk och skrämmer dem med det hen vet att de är rädda för.
köken: Inherited from Latin cōtem, accusative of cōs. The expected result would have been *coate in Romanian, but may have been influenced by cuțit and ascuți.