Norway is set to add a new gender-neutral pronoun to its official language and dictionaries within a year.
The Language Council of Norway confirmed that “hen” would be an alternate to the feminine “hun” and masculine “han” when referring to someone in the third-person.
Speaking to local media in the country, Daniel Ims, a representative of the council, explained that speech patterns did not initially justify the addition of gender-neutral pronouns – though this is no longer the case.
“Over time, we have seen that the actual use of hen has increased and stabilised,” he added.
This has been mirrored all over the world, with one French dictionary recently adding non-binary pronouns for the first time.
Similarly, the Merriam-Webster dictionary in the United States added “they” as a singular gender-neutral definition of the pronoun in 2019.
“Hen” could appear in Norwegian dictionaries as soon as the spring, something that Carl-Oscar Vik, a non-binary resident of Skien in south-east Norway, said they welcomed.
“I think that a normal person on the street doesn’t know anyone who identifies as non-binary,” they told The Guardian. “But I hope that by getting hen into the dictionary we can get the idea out there, because there are many people who don’t feel at home in certain pronouns but don’t have the words to describe it.”
According to Ims, the new pronoun may appear in the country’s dictionaries once a consultation phase of “all in the [Norwegian] language community” takes place.
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