Letter: Finnish and be done with it
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Sir: Seeing yet another letter on the he-or-she debate (22 February), I cannot resist boasting a little on behalf of my native language, Finnish.
While Finnish has words for man (mies) and woman (nainen), it has just one personal pronoun (han) to mean both 'he' and 'she'. The Finnish for 'mankind' is ihmiskunta, derived from ihminen, which refers to a person of either sex. This neat political correctness is not the result of some kind of feminist purge of our language, but simply the way Finnish has always expressed things.
The fact that the women of Finland were the first in Europe to gain the vote, some 22 years ahead of British women, does appear to prove the benefits of a gender- free language.
As all attempts to pummel the English language into a more politically correct shape seem to result in endless muddle, disagreement and newspaper correspondence, why not adopt Finnish in its place as a world language and be done with it?
Yours,
IIRIS PURSIAINEN
Clevedon, Avon
22 February
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments