About 68% of the world’s languages sampled in an interactive available from the World Atlas of Language Structures don’t have a gender specific pronouns. 254 of the 378 mapped languages in the interactive map don’t use “he” or “she” but instead used a gender neutral pronoun when referring to persons.
Only about 30% of the sample languages used gender specific pronouns. The greatest concentration of languages with gender in personal pronouns is found in Africa. According to linguist Siewierska (1955 – 2011), the other major geographic area where gender in personal pronouns is common is Eurasia and especially Europe.
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Reference
Anna Siewierska. 2013. Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns. In: Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.)
The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://wals.info/chapter/44, Accessed on 2014-10-12.)
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