Nah, it’s just a single differentiation between people and non-persons, e.g. him vs that.
There are gender-free languages that still make this distinction, e.g. Hungarian ő vs az.
To add to the subject of complexity, in English you have 3 genders, 2 numbers (singular/plural), and 4 cases, totalling a maximum of 24 pronouns. A gender-free language would just set the first factor to 1. Adding differentiation by e.g. status would increment (in cases of there being one extra formal gender for the 3rd person) or multiply it (when there are different versions for all pronouns).
That would require a lot of pronouns! But sounds interesting ngl
Nah, it’s just a single differentiation between people and non-persons, e.g. him vs that.
There are gender-free languages that still make this distinction, e.g. Hungarian ő vs az.
To add to the subject of complexity, in English you have 3 genders, 2 numbers (singular/plural), and 4 cases, totalling a maximum of 24 pronouns. A gender-free language would just set the first factor to 1. Adding differentiation by e.g. status would increment (in cases of there being one extra formal gender for the 3rd person) or multiply it (when there are different versions for all pronouns).
Ah thanks for the clarification! I completely misread the comment somehow lol.
They/them, the standard pronouns that have been part of the English language since it was spoken in a way completely unintelligible to people today.