Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by seivan 4364 days ago
I don't care. Will still use it and educate. I am aware that it might mean höna for some, but I am expecting curiosity to get the better of 'em and hope they look into it.
2 comments

Unfortunately, "hen" in English means a female chicken (or other bird, e.g. a peacock is male and a peahen is female), so all you achieve is giving the wrong impression that your language skills are lacking, AND you could be making a sexist remark (hen might be misconstrued as a condescending term for a woman), the complete opposite of what you intended.
I think it's a bit weird to be honest. Are other Swedes doing this, trying to shoehorn "hen" into other languages?

I've seen "they", in the singular, used as a gender-neutral English pronoun pretty extensively, perhaps that's worth looking into. Either way, kudos.

English has some invented gender-neutral pronouns as well, such as Zie, Hir, etc.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-neut...