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A society of ungendered beings speak English. They have no concept of gender identity, and haven't for thousands of years.

They have all the other concepts we have in English that we use to derive pronouns from:

  • Speaker vs audience: "I / Me" vs "You".
  • Inanimate vs living : "It" vs "they"
  • Nearer object vs other object :"This" vs "That"
  • Group containing speaker vs excluding speaker: "We / us" vs "They / them"

What they are missing is two shorthand placeholders in the language allowing for beings to be temporarily identified in context by their gender: "Steven and Sarah are visiting me tomorrow. He is bringing the drinks, she is bringing the snacks. His car broke down on him so he'll be late!".

The mention of "Steven" automatically assigns that subject to the "He" placeholder for the rest of the paragraph, and "Sarah" gets automatically assigned to the "She" placeholder for the rest of the paragraph. This ability to compress language by assigning people to short single-syllable placeholders is lost if gender is removed - and replacing both guests with "they" leads to unambiguity.

The only solutions I see (without modifying the language) is to either structure communication such that "they" remains unambiguous (split the guests plans apart into two separate sentences with no cross over), or call everyone by name each time they're referenced. Both are inefficient, and I'm aware languages tend to evolve out inefficiencies, suggesting to me that some other concept will be used to partition members of a society, or some other way will be used such that 2 or more subjects can be referenced unambiguously efficiently within a short context.

If not gender, what would an English-speaking society use to replace the convenience of the missing single-syllable gendered pronouns?

Whether they have a biological sex / reproduce sexually / have genitals is definitely irrelevant to the question - in the society the concept of classifying people by genital shape makes as much sense to them as splitting Earth society by shoe size or belly button radius.

For the actual structure / biology / tech level / etc of the society I'm not sure how much it actually matters, I'd prefer an abstract answer ideally, but setting and language are linked so for those who want to base their answer on appearance or history I'm going to declare them highly advanced humanoids that have converged in appearance. Think like the Asguard from SG1 - can no longer reproduce sexually due to over-the-top-genetic-engineering so appear essentially uniform. The concept of gender was forgotten long ago in their history, but they have different abilities, knowledge, personalities, behaviours, quirks, status, etc.

Ideas I've had:

  • Seniority vs equivalence vs Inferiority. Master / Peer / Subservient style placeholders.
    • "Steve and servant Sarah are working on that. Mas is worried but sub knows the system back to front and sub just finished that training course."
  • Order of reference. Kind of like we do with "Former" vs "Latter".
    • "Steve and Sarah are working on that. 2 knows 2's stuff and can alleviate 1's worrys because 2 just did that training course".
  • Like "this" and "that" change which placeholder they refer to by a single vowel change, you could vary the they/them pronoun to create a few more. Tha/Tham, Tho/Thom. These unfortunately need to be defined explicitly every time they're used however, although it could be mixed with they which is implicitly defined:
    • "Steve (Tha) and Sarah are working on that. They knows their stuff and can alleviate tha's worry's - tha just paid for that course they did so they can work hard for tham".
  • Those 6 pronouns get dropped and everyone just works around it using stricter grammer rules.
  • Adopt the explicit gender-neutral pronoun Ze/zir, however the distinction between (they) "undefined gender" and (Ze) "defined gender neutral" is meaningless on a world with no gender at all - they could be used interchangeably.
  • Replace pronoun with a personal defined choice from an agreed upon list. This knowledge must be shared in advance with all parties communicating however. "Sarah uses Tha pronoun. Steven uses Thi pronoun."
  • Use nicknames. Someone's nickname must be shared in advance too however.
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    $\begingroup$ I think this is a writing SE question rather than a worldbuilding one. Does this answer the question? writing.stackexchange.com/questions/34460/… $\endgroup$
    – DWKraus
    Commented Apr 15, 2021 at 2:26
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    $\begingroup$ Well, speaking personally, I've responded to the name "big feet" on more than one occasion, my nose comes into the conversation, sometimes several minutes before I do, boom, boom. It strikes me that the usual thing is to use people's name, in shorthand, a recognizable characteristic. Of course the ultrasonic whistle of someone's deviated septum - heard by the aliens, but not by humans might get abandoned quick as epithet. Very broad at present without multidimensional analysis of your alien's capabilities, culture, the people they encounter, mutual objectives ........ $\endgroup$
    – Escaped dental patient.
    Commented Apr 15, 2021 at 2:52
  • $\begingroup$ Didn't think this was opinion based at all, but it's about to suffer the VTC death anyway. Sigh. Hence the early answer pick. $\endgroup$
    – Ash
    Commented Apr 15, 2021 at 4:51

2 Answers 2

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Many languages do not encode gender into their pronouns (Finnish, Chinese, Farsi, Indonesian ...to name a few) and the speakers of these languages get along just fine.

Other languages have gendered pronouns but these pronouns do not encode the same amount of information as does those in English. French for instances has gender in the possessive pronouns but the gender of the pronoun must correspond to the gender of the things being possesed, not of the possessor and thus the gender of the possessor cannot be inferred from the pronoun alone.

English gendered pronouns fail to help distinguish in cases when both characters are of the same gender:

"Steven and Sam are visiting me tomorrow. He is bringing the drinks, he is bringing the snacks. His car broke down on him so he'll be late!"

Gender in languages is just like most other linguistical phenomena, arising stochastically from the constraints under which a languages develops. Just as in the sentence above, the pronoun would not be used due to ambiguity, so the names themselves would likely be used instead.

Under the right constraints, any of the above mentioned linguistical constructs could arise, however, there would need to be good explanation. Why would pronouns be preferred instead of just using names? For example, if there is some taboo against using names we might see an elaborate form of pronouns arise which could indicate social status...etc.

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  • $\begingroup$ You are assuming Sam is a male, as in Samuel. Sam could be a female, as in Samantha. Then there's the issue of seemingly gender-less names such as Lindsey, Lesley, or same sounding names such as Peter for men & Peta for women, Vivienne (female) and Vivian (male). Is Evelyn a female or male name? Are you familiar with Evelyn Waugh or Viv Richards $\endgroup$
    – user81881
    Commented Apr 15, 2021 at 6:21
  • $\begingroup$ "Steven and Sam are visiting me tomorrow. He is bringing the drinks, he is bringing the snacks. His car broke down on him so he'll be late!". Is illiterate drivel. One can only use the gendered pronoun shortcut when the context is absolutely unambiguous. Try "Steven and Sam are visiting me tomorrow. Steven is bringing the drinks, Sam is bringing the snacks. Steven's car broke down on him so he'll be late!". Also acceptable is "Steven and Sam are visiting me tomorrow. He is bringing the drinks, Sam is bringing the snacks. Steven's car broke down on him so he'll be late!". $\endgroup$
    – PcMan
    Commented Apr 15, 2021 at 6:49
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    $\begingroup$ @Fred I don't think he's assuming Sam is Samuel and not Samantha because Sam is just a placeholder name for a person other than Steven (especially since he clarified both are from the same gender and referred to both as "he"). In a society without a concept of gender, I don't think gender-less names would be a problem either. Whether Sam means Samuel, Samantha, Samael or simply Sam is irrelevant because there's no distinction and all Sams are the same gender-wise (that is, all have no gender). $\endgroup$
    – ProjectApex
    Commented Apr 15, 2021 at 17:54
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Under such a situation there are no shorthand place holders. The person is always referred to by name.

"Steven and Sarah are visiting me tomorrow. He is bringing the drinks, she is bringing the snacks. His car broke down on him so he'll be late!".

Becomes,

"Steven and Sarah are visiting me tomorrow. Steve is bringing the drinks, Sarah is bringing the snacks. Steve's car broke so Steve'll be late!".

Even to the point of removing "on him".

Everyone has a clear understanding of who is who and who is doing what without reference to gender because people are always referred to by name. There is no ambiguity.

It becomes so ingrained it is the normal way to refer to people.

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