Tell me your pronouns, and I¡¯ll tell you who you are. That seems to be the present state in English, where these little words have become much more than just grammatical stand-ins for person nouns. Whether you identify as ¡°he,¡± ¡°she¡± or ¡°they¡± ¡ª or prefer not to identify at all ¡ª seems as much a political choice as it is a linguistic one.
But what about pronouns ¡ª ´úÃûÔ~ (daimeishi) ¡ª in Japanese?
One important thing to note is that, in terms of frequency, ´úÃûÔ~ are used far less often than in English. That¡¯s because Japanese allows for sentences without overt subjects. As a result, you can talk about someone for a considerable amount of time without giving away their gender. In English, that would be all but impossible since the odd ¡°he¡± or ¡°she¡± would be hard to avoid. After all, that¡¯s one of the reasons English developed the use of the singular ¡°they¡± in the first place.
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