wrote

Finnish makes no difference between he and she, they are all hn.

(Sorry, Marina, I had to delete the letter in the above word that isn't
part of the ASCII character set, because otherwise this message wouldn't
post!)

I sure wish English had a word like that! Not that I would want to banish
"he" and "she" - if you're talking about a specific individual and you
know
his/her gender, then use the appropriate pronoun. But there really should
be third person singular pronoun that *doesn't* specify gender, for all
those times you're talking about hypothetical persons (such as when I just
did it 3 lines above, when I wrote "his/her gender"), or when you are
talking
about someone specific but you don't know "their" gender.

(And if anyone writes to say nasal voice, "English *does* have a gender-
neutral third-person singular pronoun: 'he'" I'll bap *him* on the head,
all claws out! "He" ain't neutral!)

There really should be a word that's truly neutral, so we, in our quest
for accuracy and fairness, aren't forced into awkward constructions or
grammatical incorrectness.

Tell me about it! This is a problem I face every day as I translate from
Finnish to English. For every han (I'll write it like this, though han in
turn means he in Swedish ;o), I have to change the wording or put in a
clumsy "he or she", "he/she" or "s/he". Not to mention the "him- or
herselves", "his or hers" etc.

--
Marina