Irish
In Irish, the masculine singular pronoun sé is used when referring to masculine nouns, and the feminine when referring to feminine nouns; however, when referring to persons, the masculine or feminine pronoun is normally used for male or female persons respectively, regardless of grammatical gender. There is no gender-neutral pronoun, and official usage varies between systematically using sé nó sí or using the pronoun of the appropriate gender for the noun referred to. However, the third-person masculine plural disappeared from Irish, and the (originally) feminine siad is now used for all instances of "they".
Read more about this topic: Gender-neutral Pronoun
Famous quotes containing the word irish:
“I hope you will not be washed away by the Irish sea.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“Concurring hands divide
flax for damask
that when bleached by Irish weather
has the silvered chamois-leather
water-tightness of a
skin.”
—Marianne Moore (18871972)
“We Irish are too poetical to be poets; we are a nation of brilliant failures, but we are the greatest talkers since the Greeks.”
—Oscar Wilde (18541900)