Does German have a gender neutral third person pronoun?
In English, there is he/she. However, English does not have a Gender neutral/apathetic pronoun, where a person can be referred to without any context of gender.
Curious if German does? I thought the word is 'sie' but not sure.
The English word Gender can have two meanings:
The answer to your question depends on which meaning of gender you intended to use.
If you were talking about grammatical gender, the answer is: Technically the neuter pronoun es functions as one, as it is neuter, not masculine or feminine. However, this would not be a reasonable question, as the grammatical gender unambiguously requires exactly one type of pronoun. Compare the following sentences:
Siehst du das Kind? Es spielt im Sandkasten.
Siehst du den Buben? Er spielt im Sandkasten.
Siehst du die Schwester? Sie spielt im Sandkasten.
But:
Siehst du das Mädchen? Es spielt im Sandkasten.
Using the examples above, it should become obvious that there is only one grammatically correct choice per word and it does not have to conform to the biological sex or the gender identity of the person in question. To further prove this, allow me to present the following three examples which could all be used to reference the same person (assume a chess club as the setting):
Der Mensch, der an Brett 2 mit Schwarz gespielt hat, hat seinen Geldbeutel vergessen.
Die Person, die an Brett 2 mit Schwarz gespielt hat, hat ihren Geldbeutel vergessen.
Das Mitglied, das an Brett 2 mit Schwarz gespielt hat, hat seinen Geldbeutel verloren.
(In the third example, neuter seinen happens to have the same form as masculine seinen.)
If you were talking about social gender (or gender identities), then no, German does not have a commonly used word that functions as a non-binary or gender-neutral third-person pronoun unlike English where singular they is (and has been) in common use. I seem to recall having read about a couple of people who attempted to introduce gender-neutral third person pronouns; however, unlike the use of they in English I have not come across any option ʻin the wildʼ in any meaningful degree.
English does not have a Gender neutral/apathetic pronoun
As far as I am concerned, there is: "they"
In the German language, we have the genus "es" (meaning "it") but it's rarely used in that context. We don't have a native word like "they", however, some suggested the use of "sie*er" or shortened as "sier" but that is still pretty new and non-standard.
Since German pronoun sie translates to both, singular feminine she and plural indeterminate they in English, it’s rather unlikely that something very much like indeterminate “singular they” in English will ever develop in German.
However, unlike English it, it’s perfectly normal to use the German neuter relative pronoun es to refer to people – but only if they have been referenced by a neuter noun before, e.g. Mädchen, Weib, Opfer. This used to be more common and could be continued throughout many sentences. Nowadays, personal pronouns may always – and usually do – agree with the natural gender instead of the grammatical gender (where they do not align with each other anyway).
As a personal pronoun that directly (deictically) references a single third natural person and not a noun or name within the cotext, the grammatical genders masculine and feminine must match the assumed natural genders (i.e. sexes) male and female, respectively.
Etymologically, pronouns and nouns with masculine grammatical gender primarily referred to concrete, individual subjects and feminine ones to abstract, collectives objects. Hence, the personal interrogative pronoun, whether the gender is unknown or not, is wer? – and wie? is already occupied by the modal interrogative pronoun.
Synchronically, this observation is becoming less and less relevant, but still, masculine inflection is the default and so is relation.
This means that one may use er (and respective masculine relative pronouns der, dieser, welcher, jener) as a generic personal pronoun in some cases where the gender is unknown, unknowable or unimportant. In most cases this would require also using masculine nouns that have feminine derivates (often with an -in suffix) in close proximity, which is now often frowned upon. If one of the many more gender-inclusive phrasal alternatives is used, the pronouns need to be adjusted as well, e.g. er/sie, er_sie, er*sie or sie/er, sometimes (but rarely) contracted to the neologism *sier or *siEr.
The usual general personal pronoun in German is man. It never refers to a concrete individual but to general concepts. It's also visible slightly altered in niemand (“nobody”, “noöne”) and jemand (“somebody”, “someone”). This can be used in a gender-neutral way, although it is homophonous and etymologically related to Mann (“man”, “male”).
Hypothetically, it could be extended to singular words for “everyone” / “everybody”, e.g. *allmand or *jedmand, since alle is plural. Other neologisms would be feasible then, e.g. *domand or diesmand for “this one”.
In some Southern dialects of German, wo can be used as a relative pronoun to refer to people (cf. “who”). In the standard register, however, it is only valid for local references (“where”).
In German, we have 3 genders in language: männlich, weiblich and sächlich.
Many people confuse the gender of a word with the sex of a person, if the word denotes a person. This lead to pseudo scientific theories about the language and political policies, which don't fit to the rest of the language, while it often seems, as if it fits.
But note: "Das Weib" uses the gender sächlich, while the person is 100% female, and "Das Mädchen" is 100% female, too.
"Das Mitglied" uses the sächlich gender, too, while the sex of the Mitglied is either male or female but the sex might be unknown or of no significance.
"Die Person" is female, but regularly used for male persons without further ado.
But all those exceptions are ignored by those, who insists, that the gender of a word has to match the gender of the person, if a person is involved, and both genders, male AND female, have to be used, if the sex is unknown or both sexes are addressed.
"Sie" is a female word (if not used as the general plural: Drei Männer treiben Sport; sie tanzen. Drei Frauen treiben Sport; sie spielen Fußball. Drei Hühner gackern; sie schauen zu).
Die Koryphäe in Computerfragen, Donald Knuth, wird auf der Konferenz sprechen.
The word "Koryphäe" is female, while the person is male.
Die Reinigungskraft war heute nicht pünklich.
We don't know anything about the sex of the cleaning person.
Der Matheprofessor ist noch nicht benannt.
We don't know anything about the sex of the math teacher.
Der Krieg ist die Mutter aller Dinge (not Clausewitz, who used "Vater").
The gender of Krieg is male, but of Mutter, it is female. So you have to change the gender so that it fits to the word, you use.
The word "Person" itself is of female gender, so it is always "die Person", while most generic forms, like "Polizist, Schwimmer, Asiate" are male in the neutral form.
I think you have wrong assumptions about grammatical gender. Grammatical gender is a grammatical feature, not a biological. German nouns have a grammatical gender. People don't. People have a biological sexus. Normally biological sexus and grammatical gender match, but there are also many exceptions.
The most prominent exception is the noun »Mädchen« which is a neuter (not neutral!) noun but it means »girl«:
Das Mädchen ist schön. Es hat langes Haar.
The girl is beautiful. She has long hair.
As you can see, in German it is perfectly normal to often use the neuter pronoun »es« to refer to a female person. The grammatical gender of the noun that a pronoun refers to, in this case "das Mädchen", takes precedence over the sexus/gender of the person.
English nouns do not have any gender. So, in English, pronouns can't refer to the grammatical gender of a noun. Instead they refer to the sexus of the person or thing that is named by the noun. This is a different mechanism than in German. And if this person or thing doesn't have a biological gender, you use the pronoun »they« or »it« in English. In German we don't care about the biological sexus of people when we use pronouns. We care about the grammatical gender of nouns.
I give you another example to make it more clear: In German you can use these three noun for an old shabby limousine:
So, for a shabby and rusty limousine you can use all three nouns:
neuter noun needs neuter pronoun: Das Auto ist alt. Es ist rostig.
masculine noun needs masculine pronoun: Der Wagen ist alt. Er ist rostig.
feminine noun needs feminine pronoun: Die Karre ist alt. Sie ist rostig.
German doesn't have any gender-neutral words. Each word has one of these three grammatical genders:
So, when ever you talk about a person, you have to use a noun to describe this person, and any pronoun you use must have the same grammatical gender as this noun. This is even true if the noun itself is not said or written. This may lead to ambiguous situations, where it is not really clear, which pronoun to use, and to use a pronoun that matches to the biological sexus is often a good idea in such a situation. But still if you do so, the pronoun in fact matches to a noun that is in the mind of the speaker, even if they don't use this noun.
Example:
A person, about 5 years old, with pigtails, wearing a pink dress, playing with a doll and named »Emma« by the other persons in the room hits her leg and starts crying. Someone who watches the scene could say:
Es hat sich verletzt.
So you know, the speaker refers to a neuter noun when they think about this person. This might be »das Mädchen« (the girl) oder »das Kind« (the child) which are both neuter nouns, also the person is female.
Another example:
In German you could say:
Die Koryphäe weis mehr als alle anderen über dieses Fachgebiet.
Although the noun die Koryphäe is a feminine noun, this does not mean, that the person meant by this word has to be female. Also a male person can be eine Koryphäe. The same is true for the masculine noun »der Champion« this can be a female or a male person.
Das Genie ist heute bei und zu Gast. Es hält einen Vortrag über Quantenkryptographie.
The word »das Genie« is neuter. It can mean a female or a male person.
Another situation is when you don't know the biological sexus of a person. Also in this case you have to use a pronoun that matches with with the noun you use to discribe this person:
In der dunklen Nische stand eine vermummte Gestalt. Gleich darauf verschwand sie.
A hooded figure stood in the dark alcove. Immediately after that they disappeared.
Here you have to use sie because this pronoun refers to the noun »Gestalt« which is a feminine noun. But the reader still doesn't know the biological sexus of this hooded figure. In English you have to use the singular they in such a case, because in English you always refer to the biological sexus of a person, but when you don't know it, you can't use he or she, so you use they.
Some exceptions:
Since about 1970/1980 German speaking people more and more begin to use pronouns that match with the biological sexus if a word refers to a person and the grammatical gender of the noun and the biological sexus differ, and since about 20 years it no longer is considered to be wrong:
Das Mädchen ist schön. Es hat langes Haar.
The girl is beautiful. She has long hair.
Das Mädchen ist schön. Sie hat langes Haar.
There are some German words that have two genders. See this list. That means, that you can choose a gender, but once you have chosen one, you should stick with it.
But there is no Gernan noun without any gender. This is impossible in German. (In English every noun has no grammatical gender.)
As a German teacher in the US, I had to think about a possible solution replacing the German pronouns er/sie (he/she) for my students, since here it is officially they/their. I came up with Euer.
I have students that are gender neutral, but also a new student whose appear and first name gave me no clue of they's gender. Having a German pronoun "they" for both genders would be wonderful and so convienient. No more uncomfortable situations! But everything that I researched so far makes it too difficult for me to speak. Obviously there is no agreement yet, I need a solution for next year teaching.
At least for he/she, his/her, him, ... - articles and endings for professions is a different chapter. I think that I will just use Euer for now instead of he or she, his or her, etc. - since EUER was once used it doesn't feel so odd to me when speaking or playing "Guess Who".
I hope Euer is able to cover all of our 4 cases - will find out ... but I think Euer could be helpful just to get around for now, to avoid an uncomfortable situation if I had to guess a gender preference of a student or if one asks what "they" is translated into German.
One thought about "Sie" ("you" used for unfamiliar adults) or "sie" for 2 or more persons, it is the feminine form for all - any thoughts on this?
