Gender-neutrality in languages with grammatical gender
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Gender neutrality in languages with grammatical gender
implies promoting language usage
which is balanced in its treatment of the genders. For example, advocates of gender-neutral language challenge the traditional use of masculine nouns and pronouns ("man", "businessman", "he", and so on) when referring to both genders or to a person or people of an unknown gender in most Indo-European
and Afro-Asiatic languages
.
s, such as French, German, and Spanish, is very different from that of English
, because it is often impossible to construct a gender-neutral sentence as can be done in English. For example, in French, the masculine gender supersedes the feminine; the phrase la femme et l'homme (the woman and the man) is replaced by the pronoun ils (they [masculine]).
Accordingly, language modification advocates have focused much of their attention on issues such as job titles. Due to the presence of grammatical gender, their immediate goal in this case is often the exact opposite of that in English: creating feminine job titles rather than eliminating them. As such, "gender-inclusiveness" does not necessarily mean eliminating gender, but rather a use of language which they feel is balanced in its treatment of the two genders. For example, they feel that it is insulting to use the masculine gender for a female professional, for example calling a woman le médecin (the [male] doctor). They feel this would imply that women change gender or became somehow more manly when they went to work. The creation of new job titles for women is often less controversial than language modifications proposed by advocates of gender-neutral language for English, as it is often seen simply as a natural evolution as women have entered more professions.
At the same time, the newer feminine forms in most such languages are usually derived from the primary masculine term by adding or changing a suffix
(such as the German Ingenieurin from Ingenieur, engineer), so some feminists hold that these words are not equivalent to the masculine words because they are secondary forms. Others object to the perceived clumsiness of such neologisms. Citing German as an example, almost all the names for female professionals end in -in, and because of the suffix none can consist of a single syllable as many masculine job titles do (such as Arzt, doctor).
A further complication is that the creation of distinctly different job titles for men and women means that in writing about hypothetical people of undetermined sex, both words must be mentioned each time, which can become quite cumbersome. In languages where the gender of a noun also affects the formation of other words in a sentence, such as gender-marked adjectives, pronouns, or verbs, this can lead to repetitive or complicated sentences if both terms are used, as the sentence must essentially be repeated twice.
But in some languages, for example in Spanish, there have also been campaigns against the traditional use of the masculine gender to refer to mixed gender groups. Advocates of these changes feel that they are necessary in order for the language to not further the subordination of women. These modification efforts have been much more controversial. In addition to the sorts of conflict seen in the English-speaking world, some opponents of these changes see them as examples of cultural imperialism
, or the exporting of Anglo-Saxon
ideas and standards. English had already naturally lost most of its gender well before the beginning of the feminist movement
, making a gender-neutral modification of the language
much more feasible.
, which has a high degree of grammatical gender, virtually every noun (as well as most verbs and pronouns of the second and third person) is either grammatically masculine or feminine. As a result of campaigns by advocates for employment equality or gender neutral language modification, laws have been passed in Israel
that require job ads to be written in a form which explicitly proclaims that the job is offered for both males and females. The separator "/" is often used, for example dru'shim/ot, maz'kir/a.
Note that certain feminine plural verb forms of earlier Hebrew have become archaic in modern Israeli Hebrew, so that the old masculine plural forms are now used for both masculine and feminine.
has four third-person nominative
singular pronouns: er (male), sie (female), es (neuter) and man (impersonal). Man is frequently used in general statements such as Man kann hier nicht parken (One cannot park here). The pronoun man is distinguished from the noun Mann (capitalized and with double "n"), which means "male adult human". However, man cannot easily be used to refer to a specific person of indeterminate sex. In modern times, frau (distinguished from Frau) is also used to emphasize that the person referred to is female. However, this is very uncommon.
Gender-neutral language-modification advocates feel that the traditional phraseology of the language reflects a domination of the masculine over the feminine, as they feel it does in many other languages. They object to certain set phrases where the masculine form usually comes first, such as "man and woman" (Mann und Frau), and to the differential use of words like Fräulein
(although this has dropped out of common use).
Grammatical gender is a primary topic of contention among gender-neutral language advocates. Der Mensch is a grammatically masculine word which means "human being" or "person", and is the traditional Germanic word used to mean this. Alternatives are, however, fairly widespread. Die Person means the same thing, is not considered awkward or overly politically correct, and is grammatically feminine.
Feminine job titles are usually created by adding -in to the masculine word in question. For example, the general masculine term for computer scientist is Informatiker (singular or plural). This yields the feminine form Informatikerin (plural: Informatikerinnen). As in other languages, the use of a suffix to mark the feminine form implies that the unmarked masculine form is the main form of the word.
There is no universally accepted solution to the trade-off between inclusiveness and wordiness. As a result of campaigns by advocates of gender-neutral language modification, many job advertisements are now formulated so as to explicitly address both sexes (Informatiker oder Informatikerin). The option of repeating all terms in both gender forms is considered clumsy, and in the singular requires adjectives, articles, and pronouns to be stated twice. The use of slashes or parenthesis is commonplace, too, as in Informatiker/in, but this is considered visually ungainly and there is no consensus on how it is read.
A common tactic is to use a phrase such as Kolleginnen und Kollegen in an introductory paragraph, but use only the simpler masculine form in the rest of the document, often with a disclaimer.
Sometimes a form of contraction with capitalization inside the word is used (InformatikerIn; InformatikerInnen). In some circles this is especially used to formulate written openings, such as Liebe KollegInnen (Dear colleagues). One obstacle to this form is that you cannot audibly distinguish between terms (InformatikerIn sounds the same as Informatikerin). Opponents of such modification consider the capitalized I in the middle of a word to be a corruption of the language. It is also not clear which gender declension the -In form is to be used with; sometimes all adjectival endings are likewise capitalized, such as jedeR for "each person" instead of jede (each woman) or jeder (each man). This form also tends to be associated with the political left, as it is often used by left-leaning newspapers, notably Die Tageszeitung
and the Swiss weekly Die Wochenzeitung.
"We need an experienced computer scientist" could thus be expressed several ways, among which:
In some cases, neologisms may be formed: some university communities are replacing Student (male college student) and Studentin (female college student) with the participle Studierende(r), meaning "the studying/college-going person", which does not face quite as many problems with declension. Terms like Lehrer (teacher) are increasingly being replaced by collective nouns such as Lehrkraft (teaching force; faculty). Kellner (waiter) and Kellnerin (waitress) are often transformed into Bedienung (service), which can be interpreted as having the effect of dehumanising the referent: "Fragen Sie bitte die Bedienung, falls Sie einen Wunsch haben" ("If you need anything, ask the service/help").
, Swedish
used to have three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter. Today, it only has two, neutrum (neuter), which uses the pronoun det, and another formed from the merger of the masculine with the feminine, known as utrum (common gender), which uses the pronoun den. A few fossilized uses of the original genders linger on. For instance, the clock as an object is a common gender word, but when used to ask or tell the time, it is treated as feminine: "Vad är klockan?" "Hon är sex" ("What time is it?" lit. "She is six o'clock").
Dialectically, the three gender system nouns survive to some extent.
Customarily, feminine pronouns are used when referring to both genders or to a person or people of an unknown gender. For example, a correct phrase is: Den tidiga människan och hennes verktyg (Early Man and her tools). The anglicization
of Swedish in the late 20th century has made the usage of masculine pronouns to refer to unspecified genders more habitual, but it is still not the rule.
Swedish adjectives are always inflected according to number, and they used to be inflected for gender as well. Gender inflection of adjectives — den sure chefen (m), den sura mamman (f) — , has not yet fallen completely into disuse and the extent of its use is dialectual. Some still use it for occupational and kinship words, but the fact remains that it no longer serves any purpose for any other nouns. This has caused some debate as to which gender inflection should be the standard one for all nouns. The feminine inflection has become the one most widely used over the country, more likely because it is more distinct before nouns that begin with a vowel than due to any wide sense of gender equality.
Until the 1970s, it was rare that women would have professions other than secretary, teacher or nurse. A majorska was the wife of a major, a biskopinna the wife of a bishop. As nearly all Swedish women are in the work force today, this usage is deprecated. The word sekreterare (secretary) now mirrors its English counterpart in usage. A woman in a profession is now usually referred to by the same title as a man, save for lärarinna, which is often still used for a female teacher, and sjuksköterska which means male or female nurse (although it is now supplemented by the neologism sjukskötare). The typical Swedish way of making occupational titles more neutral is by coining euphemism
s. What for instance used to be a städare (male janitor) or städerska (female janitor) is now uniformly, at least in formal language, a lokalvårdare (custodian).
None of this changes the fact that many Swedish women still occupy traditional women's jobs - a caretaker in a kindergarten, while formally referred to in the collective as daghemspersonal (day care staff), is still in common language a dagisfröken (kindergarten maid/female teacher), regardless of gender, because nearly all of them are women.
Yet another concern among the champions of a gender-neutral Swedish is the complete abandon of gendered personal and possessive pronouns. The most well-known attempt to replace the gendered Swedish pronouns that are currently in use is the proposal to drop han (him) and hon (her) for the neologism hen (which is said to be inspired by the Finnish gender-neutral third-person pronoun hän). The origin of the pronoun is contested, but it is reported to have been in use, albeit at an extremely small scale, already in the 1960's. Drawing on hen advocates of new pronouns usually form corresponding new pronouns such as henom (objective form of hen) and hens (third-person, gender-neutral possessive pronoun). These pronouns are not in wide usage and might even be unknown by Swedish-speakers not familiar with terms and discourse of third-wave feminism and Queer theory.
A subtler strategy of gender-neutralizing pronouns is the replacement of man (which means either man or one, as in: One ought to gender-neutralize pronouns) with en (which, literally translated, means one). Fact is that en is already used in some dialects and contexts as a replacement for man and some native speakers of Swedish would thus consider the word as belonging to regional or low-prestige language.
is that the speaker uses the normal grammatical gender of the word of a public office or another office, even if a woman is the holder. The words president and minister (forseti and ráðherra) are thus used in these cases, for example when Vigdís Finnbogadóttir
was president of Iceland.
and Classical Latin
had generic words for "human"/"humanity in general" or "human being", anthropos and homo respectively, which are the etyma of such modern terms as "anthropology
" or Homo sapiens
. For "male human as opposed to female human", there existed the separate words aner (andros-) and vir (the etyma of English "androgen" and "virile", respectively).
Most modern derivatives of the Latin noun homo, however, such as French homme, Italian uomo, Portuguese homem, and Spanish hombre, have acquired a predominantly male denotation, although they are sometimes still used generically in high registers
. For example, French Musée de l'homme for an anthropology museum exhibiting human culture, not specifically "male culture". This semantic shift was parallel to the evolution of the word man in English. These languages therefore lack a third, neutral option aside from the gender-specific words for "man" and "woman". In Romanian
, however, the cognate om retains its original meaning of "any human person", as opposed to the gender-specific words for "man" and "woman" (bărbat and femeie, respectively). In Romansh the word um only refers to a male, whereas "human being" is expressed in different ways in the different dialects: carstgaun or uman.
is common and generally standard practice among the francophone
s in Belgium
and in Canada
. By law in Quebec
, the use of gender-inclusive job titles is obligatory if the writer has not opted for gender-free terms. In France
, however, the practice of using exclusively masculine job titles is still widespread in educated use and has been upheld by the Académie Française
.
The most common way of feminizing job titles in French is by adding a feminine suffix
to the masculine version of the noun, most commonly -e (l'avocat, l'avocate), -eure (le docteur, la docteure), -euse (le travailleur, la travailleuse), -esse (le maire, la mairesse), -trice (le directeur, la directrice). For job titles ending in epicene
suffixes such as -iste (le/la dentiste) or -logue (le/la psychologue), the only change is in the article (le/la) and any associate adjectives. Abbreviated professions only change the article as well (le/la prof).
In some cases, words already had a feminine form which was rarely used, and a new one was created. For instance "docteur" had the feminine "doctoresse" but "docteure" was still created. "Chasseur" had the feminine "chasseresse" (typically used only of the goddess Artemis) but "chasseuse" was still created. Nowadays both feminine forms can be encountered, with the old ones being generally more prevalent in Europe and the new ones in Québec.
To make words or phrases gender-inclusive, French-speakers use two methods:
Words that formerly referred solely to a dignitary's wife (l'ambassadrice) are now used to refer to a woman holding the same dignitary position. Although marriage titles have mainly dropped out of use, many cite the possible confusion as a reason for continuing to use those such as Madame le Président or Madame l'ambassadeur. For this reason, the traditional use remains the most frequent in France. Nonetheless, in France, the husband of a female ambassador would never be known as Monsieur l'ambassadrice. Instead, he would be called literally "the ambassador's husband", le mari de l'ambassadeur.
Although some long-established positions of high prestige, such Governor General of Canada
exist in both masculine and feminine variants, honorary titles remain masculine throughout the Francophonie even when the award or honor is bestowed unto a woman. Examples are titles such as Grand Officier, Commandeur, Officier, Chevalier, Compagnon, Immortel used in the Order of Canada
, the National Order of Quebec
, France's Legion of Honor and the Académie Française, or Belgium's and Monaco
's Order of the Crown
.
, female job titles are easily formed with -a, -essa and other feminine suffixes, but they are often perceived as ridiculous neologisms. A female doctor is a dottoressa, while a female lawyer can be called both avvocato (masculine) or avvocatessa (a feminine neologism, sometimes perceived as ridiculous or even offensive, as it seems to overemphasize the gender). Italian job announcements often use a specific expected gender (segretaria, meccanico) or they address both genders with a slash (candidato/a). Many adjectives have identical feminine and masculine forms, so they are effectively gender-neutral when used without articles as job titles (dirigente, responsabile di...) and in many other contexts; slashes are often applied to articles (il/la cliente, the customer).
There are full sets of masculine and feminine pronouns and articles (with some coincidences) and some traces of neuter; adjectives are declined, even if many remain the same, and adjective declension is also used in the many verbal tenses involving the past participle.
The masculine gender is the default, and most correct form, for isolated adjectives and pronouns, for mixed-gender groups and for generic usage.
, similarly, the feminine is usually marked with the suffix -a, and it is generally easy to make a feminine noun from a masculine one by changing the ending -o to -a: cirujano, cirujana (surgeon; m./f.); escribano, escribana (notary; m./f.); maestro, maestra (teacher; m./f.) If the masculine version ends with a consonant, the feminine is typically formed by adding an -a to it as well: el doctor, la doctora. However, not all nouns ending in -o are masculine, and not all nouns ending in -a are feminine:
Invariable words in Spanish are often derived from the Latin agent participles -antem and -entem (accusative case): representante, comerciante, estudiante. But a female cliente is a clienta, and a female jefe is a jefa.
A few problematic cases remain:
Activists against perceived sexism in language are also concerned about words where the feminine form has a different (usually less prestigious) meaning:
As in other Romance languages
, it is traditional to use the masculine form of nouns and pronouns when referring to both males and females. Advocates of gender neutral languages modification consider this to be sexist and favor new ways of writing and speaking. Two methods have begun to come into use. One of them, seen most often in Spain
and Mexico
, is to use the at-sign
(@) or the anarchist circled A (Ⓐ) to replace -o or -a, especially in radical political writing (¡Ciudadan@s!), but use of the slash (/) as in (el/la candidato/a) is more common. The ligature æ
can be used in the same way (escritoræs for writers of both sexes, although escritores/as is more common). Opponents of such language modification feel that they are degrading to the language. Many also raise the question of how these new words are to be pronounced. See also Alternative political spellings.
Some politicians have begun to avoid perceived sexism in their speeches; the Mexican president Vicente Fox Quesada, for example, was famous for repeating gendered nouns in their masculine and feminine versions (ciudadanos y ciudadanas). This way of speaking is subject to parodies where new words with the opposite ending are created for the sole purpose of contrasting with the gendered word traditionally used for the common case (like *felizas and *especialistos in *felices y felizas or *las y los especialistas y especialistos).
Being very similar to Spanish, all considerations and almost all the examples above apply also to Portuguese
. Minoritarian languages of this group can probably use expressions with at-sign (biólog@ in Galician
), ligature æ
(outoræs in Mirandese language and autor/a in Aragonese language
).
, Serbian
has more obstacles to gender-neutral language modification than English. The Serbian language has different forms for masculine and feminine past tense: он је радио on je radio (he was working), она је радила ona je radila (she was working). Only the rare aorist
(in Serbian the aorist is a tense, not an aspect) makes no distinction between genders. Also, all nouns in Serbian have grammatical gender: masculine, feminine or neuter. Almost all nouns which end with a consonant are masculine, almost all which end with a are feminine and almost all that end with o or e are neuter. Adjectives and verb aspects (but not in all tenses) inflect for gender, too.
Gender-neutral language advocates are also unhappy with Serbian's use of noun gender. Some masculine nouns signify an occupation, while the corresponding feminine nouns refer to objects: the masculine noun говорник govornik means "male speaker", while the cognate
feminine noun говорница govornica means "female speaker", but also "podium", or a "speaker's platform"; masculine тренер trener means male coach, while the feminine word тренерка trenerka means "female coach", but also "warm-up suit".
Many feminists argue that in the Serbian language it is natural to differentiate the gender of job titles, as opposed to just using the masculine grammatical gender. Some of the language which they consider sexist includes: министар ministar for (male) minister and министарка ministarka for the wife of a minister, and професорка profesorka for the wife of professor instead of a female professor, etc. For example, they favor using учитељица učiteljica for "female teacher" (учитељ učitelj is "male teacher") and професорка profesorka for "female professor" (професор profesor is "male professor").
But many more traditional linguists, including women, argue that feminine names for occupations are not natural for the Serbian language. They feel that the masculine gender variants should be used, even when the professional in question is female.
Advocates of gender-neutral language find it difficult to avoid specifying gender in Serbian, since it is so built into the language. But one area where they have a bit more flexibility is the word "person," in its various forms: a person can be referred to as човек čovek ("human"; masculine gender), особа osoba ("person"; feminine gender) or људско биће ljudsko biće ("human being"; neuter gender).
Only plural forms have clear general meaning: професори profesori means both "male professors" and "female and male professors", but професорке profesorke means only "female professors". Many feminists prefer to say професори и професорке profesori i profesorke (male professors and female professors) and to write професори/ке profesori/ke.
intrinsically shares many of the same non-gender-neutral characteristics with other European languages.
Certain words are understood to refer to either men or women regardless of their grammatical gender. For example, человек ("human"; grammatically masculine), as opposed to мужчина ("man"; masculine with respect to agreement
, but morphologically
feminine) and женщина ("woman"; feminine), and are in fact traditionally used in cases where gender-specific terms would be used in English. Several terms that roughly mean "person" are grammatically neuter or feminine, and can similarly be used to refer to either men or women: лицо (neuter, lit. "face"), персона (feminine), личность (feminine). All such terms have a bureaucratic connotation and are seldom used colloquially. Note also that as a general rule Russian does not use neuter terms for people, just as English does not use "it" as gender-neutral pronoun.
Job titles have a masculine and a feminine version in Russian, though in most cases the feminine version is only used in colloquial speech. The masculine form is typically treated as "unmarked
", i.e. it does not necessarily imply that the person is male, while the feminine form is "marked" and can only be used when referring to a woman. In some cases, the feminine title is derogatory or connotes a suboptimal performance and is only used as slang, e.g. врачиха (female doctor), директорша or sometimes директриса (female director). In other cases, this is not the case: актриса (actress), поэтесса (poetess; e.g. Anna Akhmatova
insisted to be called поэт instead). Even in cases where the feminine term is not seen as derogatory, however, there is a growing tendency to use masculine term in more formal contexts that stress the individual's membership in a profession: "В 15 лет она стала учителем фортепиано" ("At age 15 she became a piano teacher", formal register). The feminine form may be used in less formal context to stress a personal description the individual: "Настя стала учительницей" ("Nastia became a teacher", informal register).
For this reason, use of the masculine occupation terms when referring to women, is in fact seen as more politically correct and constitutes a growing trend. The actual gender of the person can still be indicated through the verb: for example, in the phrase врач посоветовала (the doctor/m advised/f), the gender of the verb shows that the doctor was female, even as the masculine (more respectful) occupation term is used. Note, however, that there are also some grammatically feminine terms with positive connotations that are routinely used for both men and women, for example, знаменитость (celebrity).
Russian adjectives are inflected
for grammatical gender and so are verbs in the past tense. When a masculine term is used to refer to a woman, the verb usually remains in the feminine, while adjectives and possessive pronouns may take either masculine or feminine form: наш новый врач посоветовала (our/m new/m doctor/m recommended/f) or наша новая врач посоветовала (our/f new/f doctor/m recommended/f). The former usage is more formal, while the latter is more colloquial.
The third-person pronoun typically reflects the actual gender of the person when this is known, врач сказала, что она... (the doctor/m said/f that she...), but typically agrees with the grammatical gender of its antecedent
when an abstract person is discussed: Каждый врач должен помнить, что он... (Every/m doctor/m must/m remember that he...)
follows the pattern of more natural languages, in assigning the male genders to specific roles (family member, aristocracy, etc.), and further deriving the female term from that. The generic form of nouns is the same as the male form and different from the female form — for example, doktoro(j) means "doctor(s)" (male or unspecified sex), while doktorino(j) means "female doctor". Some words, like patro (father), are intrinsically masculine, but there is no root word to express "a parent".
The prefix ge- may be used for groups of mixed sex, for example, gedoktoroj (male and female doctors). Reformers have used ge- to create explicitly sex-neutral singulars such as gepatro, "a parent". Though not generally adopted, this usage has appeared in some authoritative reference works.
Explicitly marked feminine forms such as doktorino may be used to emphasize the noun's female character, but unmarked forms are also commonly used for females. Reformers have proposed morphologically well-formed but rarely used forms like virdoktoro (literally "man-doctor") and neologisms like -iĉ- (doktoriĉo) to emphasize maleness. The first form is somewhat insufficient because viro traditionally means "man, male", but does not really show any male lexeme or morpheme, virino meaning "woman". This is discussed about, some people prefer viriĉo for "man, male" as opposed to virino.
Concerning pronouns there is much discussion: ŝi is clearly female, like English she. For male persons li is used and for (not personified) animals as well as for inanimate objects ĝi. It is not clear however what form to use when a person of unknown sex is spoken of. It is officially accepted, though very rarely practiced, to use ĝi in this case. Also li is officially accepted to refer to both sexes, what of course causes some opposition. There are some suggestions for neologisms like ŝli or ri. On the other hand some people consider li to be clearly sex-neutral, what requires a new only-male pronoun, e. g. hi.
Arguments about the character and implications of "gendered" or "sexist" features in Esperanto closely parallel those raised for other, particularly European languages.
, a constructed language that is heavily based on Esperanto but seeks to avoid what some see as Esperanto's shortcomings, does not have this asymmetric sex-marking system. For example, frato means "brother" in Esperanto, but "sibling" in Ido. Ido nouns for kinds of people are sex-neutral in their ordinary form, but may be made either female- or male-specific by use of the suffixes -ino ("female", used as in Esperanto) and -ulo ("male", not to be confused with the same Esperanto suffix which means "person"). Examples: sekretario, secretary — sekretariulo, man secretary — sekretariino, woman secretary; doktoro, doctor — doktorulo, man doctor — doktorino, woman doctor. Thus, "sister" is fratino (the same as Esperanto), but brother is fratulo. Some communities use three separate words: patro ("father"), matro (mother) and genitoro (parent). Compare this with Esperanto patro, patrino and gepatroj respectively.
It also has an epicene pronoun lu, which, somewhat ambiguously, can refer to beings of any (or no) gender as well as inanimate objects. (The words "man", "woman", "baby", "goat", and "table" are all referred to by lu.)
is an auxiliary language that was developed to have a widely international vocabulary and a very simple grammar. In Interlingua, nouns have no gender except to reflect natural sex. For example, the words homine (man) and femina (woman) are masculine and feminine, respectively, but persona (person) has no gender. Adjectives are invariable and so never have to agree in gender with the nouns they modify. There is a separate nongender pronoun (illo, "it") and the possessive pronoun su ("his", "her" or "its") is gender-neutral.
Nouns such as professor and conductor denote both men and women, but specifically feminine forms such as professora conductora have been used occasionally over time. Interlingua has largely escaped charges of sexism, perhaps because the language changes easily as social values change.
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
implies promoting language usage
Word usage
Word usage is how a word, phrase, or concept is used in a language. Lexicographers gather samples of written or spoken instances where a word is used and analyze them to determine patterns of regional or social usage as well as meaning...
which is balanced in its treatment of the genders. For example, advocates of gender-neutral language challenge the traditional use of masculine nouns and pronouns ("man", "businessman", "he", and so on) when referring to both genders or to a person or people of an unknown gender in most Indo-European
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
and Afro-Asiatic languages
Afro-Asiatic languages
The Afroasiatic languages , also known as Hamito-Semitic, constitute one of the world's largest language families, with about 375 living languages...
.
Overview
The situation of gender neutral language modification in languages that have masculine and feminine grammatical genderGrammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
s, such as French, German, and Spanish, is very different from that of English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, because it is often impossible to construct a gender-neutral sentence as can be done in English. For example, in French, the masculine gender supersedes the feminine; the phrase la femme et l'homme (the woman and the man) is replaced by the pronoun ils (they [masculine]).
Accordingly, language modification advocates have focused much of their attention on issues such as job titles. Due to the presence of grammatical gender, their immediate goal in this case is often the exact opposite of that in English: creating feminine job titles rather than eliminating them. As such, "gender-inclusiveness" does not necessarily mean eliminating gender, but rather a use of language which they feel is balanced in its treatment of the two genders. For example, they feel that it is insulting to use the masculine gender for a female professional, for example calling a woman le médecin (the [male] doctor). They feel this would imply that women change gender or became somehow more manly when they went to work. The creation of new job titles for women is often less controversial than language modifications proposed by advocates of gender-neutral language for English, as it is often seen simply as a natural evolution as women have entered more professions.
At the same time, the newer feminine forms in most such languages are usually derived from the primary masculine term by adding or changing a suffix
Affix
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
(such as the German Ingenieurin from Ingenieur, engineer), so some feminists hold that these words are not equivalent to the masculine words because they are secondary forms. Others object to the perceived clumsiness of such neologisms. Citing German as an example, almost all the names for female professionals end in -in, and because of the suffix none can consist of a single syllable as many masculine job titles do (such as Arzt, doctor).
A further complication is that the creation of distinctly different job titles for men and women means that in writing about hypothetical people of undetermined sex, both words must be mentioned each time, which can become quite cumbersome. In languages where the gender of a noun also affects the formation of other words in a sentence, such as gender-marked adjectives, pronouns, or verbs, this can lead to repetitive or complicated sentences if both terms are used, as the sentence must essentially be repeated twice.
But in some languages, for example in Spanish, there have also been campaigns against the traditional use of the masculine gender to refer to mixed gender groups. Advocates of these changes feel that they are necessary in order for the language to not further the subordination of women. These modification efforts have been much more controversial. In addition to the sorts of conflict seen in the English-speaking world, some opponents of these changes see them as examples of cultural imperialism
Cultural imperialism
Cultural imperialism is the domination of one culture over another. Cultural imperialism can take the form of a general attitude or an active, formal and deliberate policy, including military action. Economic or technological factors may also play a role...
, or the exporting of Anglo-Saxon
Anglosphere
Anglosphere is a neologism which refers to those nations with English as the most common language. The term can be used more specifically to refer to those nations which share certain characteristics within their cultures based on a linguistic heritage, through being former British colonies...
ideas and standards. English had already naturally lost most of its gender well before the beginning of the feminist movement
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
, making a gender-neutral modification of the language
Language reform
Language reform is a type of language planning by massive change to a language. The usual tools of language reform are simplification and purification. Simplification makes the language easier to use by regularizing vocabulary and grammar...
much more feasible.
Hebrew
In HebrewHebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
, which has a high degree of grammatical gender, virtually every noun (as well as most verbs and pronouns of the second and third person) is either grammatically masculine or feminine. As a result of campaigns by advocates for employment equality or gender neutral language modification, laws have been passed in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
that require job ads to be written in a form which explicitly proclaims that the job is offered for both males and females. The separator "/" is often used, for example dru'shim/ot, maz'kir/a.
Note that certain feminine plural verb forms of earlier Hebrew have become archaic in modern Israeli Hebrew, so that the old masculine plural forms are now used for both masculine and feminine.
German
GermanGerman language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
has four third-person nominative
Nominative case
The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments...
singular pronouns: er (male), sie (female), es (neuter) and man (impersonal). Man is frequently used in general statements such as Man kann hier nicht parken (One cannot park here). The pronoun man is distinguished from the noun Mann (capitalized and with double "n"), which means "male adult human". However, man cannot easily be used to refer to a specific person of indeterminate sex. In modern times, frau (distinguished from Frau) is also used to emphasize that the person referred to is female. However, this is very uncommon.
Gender-neutral language-modification advocates feel that the traditional phraseology of the language reflects a domination of the masculine over the feminine, as they feel it does in many other languages. They object to certain set phrases where the masculine form usually comes first, such as "man and woman" (Mann und Frau), and to the differential use of words like Fräulein
Fräulein
Fräulein is the German language honorific previously in common use for unmarried women, comparable to Miss in English. Fräulein is the diminutive form of Frau, which was previously reserved only for married women. Since the 1970s, Fräulein has come to be used less often, and was banned from...
(although this has dropped out of common use).
Grammatical gender is a primary topic of contention among gender-neutral language advocates. Der Mensch is a grammatically masculine word which means "human being" or "person", and is the traditional Germanic word used to mean this. Alternatives are, however, fairly widespread. Die Person means the same thing, is not considered awkward or overly politically correct, and is grammatically feminine.
Feminine job titles are usually created by adding -in to the masculine word in question. For example, the general masculine term for computer scientist is Informatiker (singular or plural). This yields the feminine form Informatikerin (plural: Informatikerinnen). As in other languages, the use of a suffix to mark the feminine form implies that the unmarked masculine form is the main form of the word.
There is no universally accepted solution to the trade-off between inclusiveness and wordiness. As a result of campaigns by advocates of gender-neutral language modification, many job advertisements are now formulated so as to explicitly address both sexes (Informatiker oder Informatikerin). The option of repeating all terms in both gender forms is considered clumsy, and in the singular requires adjectives, articles, and pronouns to be stated twice. The use of slashes or parenthesis is commonplace, too, as in Informatiker/in, but this is considered visually ungainly and there is no consensus on how it is read.
A common tactic is to use a phrase such as Kolleginnen und Kollegen in an introductory paragraph, but use only the simpler masculine form in the rest of the document, often with a disclaimer.
Sometimes a form of contraction with capitalization inside the word is used (InformatikerIn; InformatikerInnen). In some circles this is especially used to formulate written openings, such as Liebe KollegInnen (Dear colleagues). One obstacle to this form is that you cannot audibly distinguish between terms (InformatikerIn sounds the same as Informatikerin). Opponents of such modification consider the capitalized I in the middle of a word to be a corruption of the language. It is also not clear which gender declension the -In form is to be used with; sometimes all adjectival endings are likewise capitalized, such as jedeR for "each person" instead of jede (each woman) or jeder (each man). This form also tends to be associated with the political left, as it is often used by left-leaning newspapers, notably Die Tageszeitung
Die tageszeitung
die tageszeitung , was founded in 1978 in Berlin. It is a cooperative-owned German daily newspaper which is administrated by a workers' self-management...
and the Swiss weekly Die Wochenzeitung.
"We need an experienced computer scientist" could thus be expressed several ways, among which:
- Stated twice (hendiadysHendiadysHendiadys is a figure of speech used for emphasis — "The substitution of a conjunction for a subordination". The basic idea is to use two words linked by a conjunction to express a single complex idea....
): - Wir brauchen eine erfahrene Informatikerin oder einen erfahrenen Informatiker.
- Using slashes:
- Wir brauchen eine/n erfahrene/n Informatiker/in.
- By highlighting the suffix -in:
- Wir brauchen eine erfahrene InformatikerIn;
- sometimes Wir brauchen eineN erfahreneN InformatikerIn. This is considered bad style, although frequently used.
- Masculine form, with indication that both genders are implied:
- Wir brauchen einen erfahrenen Informatiker (m/w).
- Frequently, too, job ads will use a pseudo-English term to avoid the issue:
- Computer-Scientist (m/w) gesucht! "Computer scientist (m/f) sought!"
In some cases, neologisms may be formed: some university communities are replacing Student (male college student) and Studentin (female college student) with the participle Studierende(r), meaning "the studying/college-going person", which does not face quite as many problems with declension. Terms like Lehrer (teacher) are increasingly being replaced by collective nouns such as Lehrkraft (teaching force; faculty). Kellner (waiter) and Kellnerin (waitress) are often transformed into Bedienung (service), which can be interpreted as having the effect of dehumanising the referent: "Fragen Sie bitte die Bedienung, falls Sie einen Wunsch haben" ("If you need anything, ask the service/help").
Swedish
Like other Germanic languagesGermanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
, Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
used to have three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter. Today, it only has two, neutrum (neuter), which uses the pronoun det, and another formed from the merger of the masculine with the feminine, known as utrum (common gender), which uses the pronoun den. A few fossilized uses of the original genders linger on. For instance, the clock as an object is a common gender word, but when used to ask or tell the time, it is treated as feminine: "Vad är klockan?" "Hon är sex" ("What time is it?" lit. "She is six o'clock").
Dialectically, the three gender system nouns survive to some extent.
Customarily, feminine pronouns are used when referring to both genders or to a person or people of an unknown gender. For example, a correct phrase is: Den tidiga människan och hennes verktyg (Early Man and her tools). The anglicization
Anglicisation
Anglicisation, or anglicization , is the process of converting verbal or written elements of any other language into a form that is more comprehensible to an English speaker, or, more generally, of altering something such that it becomes English in form or character.The term most often refers to...
of Swedish in the late 20th century has made the usage of masculine pronouns to refer to unspecified genders more habitual, but it is still not the rule.
Swedish adjectives are always inflected according to number, and they used to be inflected for gender as well. Gender inflection of adjectives — den sure chefen (m), den sura mamman (f) — , has not yet fallen completely into disuse and the extent of its use is dialectual. Some still use it for occupational and kinship words, but the fact remains that it no longer serves any purpose for any other nouns. This has caused some debate as to which gender inflection should be the standard one for all nouns. The feminine inflection has become the one most widely used over the country, more likely because it is more distinct before nouns that begin with a vowel than due to any wide sense of gender equality.
Until the 1970s, it was rare that women would have professions other than secretary, teacher or nurse. A majorska was the wife of a major, a biskopinna the wife of a bishop. As nearly all Swedish women are in the work force today, this usage is deprecated. The word sekreterare (secretary) now mirrors its English counterpart in usage. A woman in a profession is now usually referred to by the same title as a man, save for lärarinna, which is often still used for a female teacher, and sjuksköterska which means male or female nurse (although it is now supplemented by the neologism sjukskötare). The typical Swedish way of making occupational titles more neutral is by coining euphemism
Euphemism
A euphemism is the substitution of a mild, inoffensive, relatively uncontroversial phrase for another more frank expression that might offend or otherwise suggest something unpleasant to the audience...
s. What for instance used to be a städare (male janitor) or städerska (female janitor) is now uniformly, at least in formal language, a lokalvårdare (custodian).
None of this changes the fact that many Swedish women still occupy traditional women's jobs - a caretaker in a kindergarten, while formally referred to in the collective as daghemspersonal (day care staff), is still in common language a dagisfröken (kindergarten maid/female teacher), regardless of gender, because nearly all of them are women.
Yet another concern among the champions of a gender-neutral Swedish is the complete abandon of gendered personal and possessive pronouns. The most well-known attempt to replace the gendered Swedish pronouns that are currently in use is the proposal to drop han (him) and hon (her) for the neologism hen (which is said to be inspired by the Finnish gender-neutral third-person pronoun hän). The origin of the pronoun is contested, but it is reported to have been in use, albeit at an extremely small scale, already in the 1960's. Drawing on hen advocates of new pronouns usually form corresponding new pronouns such as henom (objective form of hen) and hens (third-person, gender-neutral possessive pronoun). These pronouns are not in wide usage and might even be unknown by Swedish-speakers not familiar with terms and discourse of third-wave feminism and Queer theory.
A subtler strategy of gender-neutralizing pronouns is the replacement of man (which means either man or one, as in: One ought to gender-neutralize pronouns) with en (which, literally translated, means one). Fact is that en is already used in some dialects and contexts as a replacement for man and some native speakers of Swedish would thus consider the word as belonging to regional or low-prestige language.
Icelandic
The policy of gender neutrality in the Icelandic languageIcelandic language
Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...
is that the speaker uses the normal grammatical gender of the word of a public office or another office, even if a woman is the holder. The words president and minister (forseti and ráðherra) are thus used in these cases, for example when Vigdís Finnbogadóttir
Vigdís Finnbogadóttir
Vigdís Finnbogadóttir is an Icelandic politician who served as the fourth President of Iceland from 1980 to 1996. In addition to being both Iceland's and Europe's first female president, she was the world's first democratically elected female head of state...
was president of Iceland.
Historical note
Ancient GreekAncient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
and Classical Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
had generic words for "human"/"humanity in general" or "human being", anthropos and homo respectively, which are the etyma of such modern terms as "anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
" or Homo sapiens
Human
Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...
. For "male human as opposed to female human", there existed the separate words aner (andros-) and vir (the etyma of English "androgen" and "virile", respectively).
Most modern derivatives of the Latin noun homo, however, such as French homme, Italian uomo, Portuguese homem, and Spanish hombre, have acquired a predominantly male denotation, although they are sometimes still used generically in high registers
Register (linguistics)
In linguistics, a register is a variety of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. For example, when speaking in a formal setting an English speaker may be more likely to adhere more closely to prescribed grammar, pronounce words ending in -ing with a velar nasal...
. For example, French Musée de l'homme for an anthropology museum exhibiting human culture, not specifically "male culture". This semantic shift was parallel to the evolution of the word man in English. These languages therefore lack a third, neutral option aside from the gender-specific words for "man" and "woman". In Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
, however, the cognate om retains its original meaning of "any human person", as opposed to the gender-specific words for "man" and "woman" (bărbat and femeie, respectively). In Romansh the word um only refers to a male, whereas "human being" is expressed in different ways in the different dialects: carstgaun or uman.
French
The use of non-sexist job titles in FrenchFrench language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
is common and generally standard practice among the francophone
Francophone
The adjective francophone means French-speaking, typically as primary language, whether referring to individuals, groups, or places. Often, the word is used as a noun to describe a natively French-speaking person....
s in Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
and in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. By law in Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
, the use of gender-inclusive job titles is obligatory if the writer has not opted for gender-free terms. In France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, however, the practice of using exclusively masculine job titles is still widespread in educated use and has been upheld by the Académie Française
Académie française
L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...
.
The most common way of feminizing job titles in French is by adding a feminine suffix
Affix
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
to the masculine version of the noun, most commonly -e (l'avocat, l'avocate), -eure (le docteur, la docteure), -euse (le travailleur, la travailleuse), -esse (le maire, la mairesse), -trice (le directeur, la directrice). For job titles ending in epicene
Epicene
Epicene is an adjective for loss of gender distinction, often specific loss of masculinity. It includes:* effeminacy — a man with characteristics that are traditionally feminine...
suffixes such as -iste (le/la dentiste) or -logue (le/la psychologue), the only change is in the article (le/la) and any associate adjectives. Abbreviated professions only change the article as well (le/la prof).
In some cases, words already had a feminine form which was rarely used, and a new one was created. For instance "docteur" had the feminine "doctoresse" but "docteure" was still created. "Chasseur" had the feminine "chasseresse" (typically used only of the goddess Artemis) but "chasseuse" was still created. Nowadays both feminine forms can be encountered, with the old ones being generally more prevalent in Europe and the new ones in Québec.
To make words or phrases gender-inclusive, French-speakers use two methods:
- hyphens, brackets or capital letters to insert feminine endings: étudiant-e-s, étudiant(e)s or étudiantEs; most writers avoid this practice in official titles such as Governor General and favor the next process;
- hendiadysHendiadysHendiadys is a figure of speech used for emphasis — "The substitution of a conjunction for a subordination". The basic idea is to use two words linked by a conjunction to express a single complex idea....
containing a feminine word and a masculine word: toutes et tous, citoyennes et citoyens.
Words that formerly referred solely to a dignitary's wife (l'ambassadrice) are now used to refer to a woman holding the same dignitary position. Although marriage titles have mainly dropped out of use, many cite the possible confusion as a reason for continuing to use those such as Madame le Président or Madame l'ambassadeur. For this reason, the traditional use remains the most frequent in France. Nonetheless, in France, the husband of a female ambassador would never be known as Monsieur l'ambassadrice. Instead, he would be called literally "the ambassador's husband", le mari de l'ambassadeur.
Although some long-established positions of high prestige, such Governor General of Canada
Governor General of Canada
The Governor General of Canada is the federal viceregal representative of the Canadian monarch, Queen Elizabeth II...
exist in both masculine and feminine variants, honorary titles remain masculine throughout the Francophonie even when the award or honor is bestowed unto a woman. Examples are titles such as Grand Officier, Commandeur, Officier, Chevalier, Compagnon, Immortel used in the Order of Canada
Order of Canada
The Order of Canada is a Canadian national order, admission into which is, within the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, the second highest honour for merit...
, the National Order of Quebec
National Order of Quebec
The National Order of Quebec, termed officially in French as l'Ordre national du Québec, and in English abbreviation as the Order of Quebec, is a civilian honour for merit in the Canadian province of Quebec...
, France's Legion of Honor and the Académie Française, or Belgium's and Monaco
Monaco
Monaco , officially the Principality of Monaco , is a sovereign city state on the French Riviera. It is bordered on three sides by its neighbour, France, and its centre is about from Italy. Its area is with a population of 35,986 as of 2011 and is the most densely populated country in the...
's Order of the Crown
Order of the Crown
The Order of the Crown is the name of a number of decorations issued by several countries. The following nations either presently, or in the past, have issued Orders of the Crown:* Order of the Crown * Order of the Crown of India...
.
Italian
In ItalianItalian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, female job titles are easily formed with -a, -essa and other feminine suffixes, but they are often perceived as ridiculous neologisms. A female doctor is a dottoressa, while a female lawyer can be called both avvocato (masculine) or avvocatessa (a feminine neologism, sometimes perceived as ridiculous or even offensive, as it seems to overemphasize the gender). Italian job announcements often use a specific expected gender (segretaria, meccanico) or they address both genders with a slash (candidato/a). Many adjectives have identical feminine and masculine forms, so they are effectively gender-neutral when used without articles as job titles (dirigente, responsabile di...) and in many other contexts; slashes are often applied to articles (il/la cliente, the customer).
There are full sets of masculine and feminine pronouns and articles (with some coincidences) and some traces of neuter; adjectives are declined, even if many remain the same, and adjective declension is also used in the many verbal tenses involving the past participle.
The masculine gender is the default, and most correct form, for isolated adjectives and pronouns, for mixed-gender groups and for generic usage.
Spanish and Portuguese
In SpanishSpanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, similarly, the feminine is usually marked with the suffix -a, and it is generally easy to make a feminine noun from a masculine one by changing the ending -o to -a: cirujano, cirujana (surgeon; m./f.); escribano, escribana (notary; m./f.); maestro, maestra (teacher; m./f.) If the masculine version ends with a consonant, the feminine is typically formed by adding an -a to it as well: el doctor, la doctora. However, not all nouns ending in -o are masculine, and not all nouns ending in -a are feminine:
- Singular nouns ending in -o or -a are invariable in some cases: testigo (witness; either male or female). La persona (the person), las personas (the people), la población (the population) and la víctima (the victim).
- Nouns with the epicene ending -ista, such as dentista, ciclista, turista, especialista (dentist, cyclist, tourist, specialist; either male or female) are almost always invariable. One exception is modisto (male fashion designer), which was created as a counterpart to modista (fashion designer, or clothes maker).
- Some nouns ending in -a refer only to men: cura, that is "priest", a word which ends in -a but is grammatically masculine, for a profession held only by men.
Invariable words in Spanish are often derived from the Latin agent participles -antem and -entem (accusative case): representante, comerciante, estudiante. But a female cliente is a clienta, and a female jefe is a jefa.
A few problematic cases remain:
- Presidenta used to be "the president's wife", but there have been several women presidents in Latin American republics, and in modern usage the word means mainly a female president, with the meaning of "the president's wife" being replaced by the phrase primera dama (first lady). Some feel that presidente can be treated as invariable, given that it ends in -ente, but others prefer to use a different feminine form.
- El policía (the policeman). Since la policía means "the police force", the only useful feminine counterpart is la mujer policía (the police woman).
- Juez (judge). Many new judges in Spain are women. Since the ending of juez is uncommon in Spanish, some prefer being called la juez while others have created the neologism jueza. Common nouns ending in -z are usually feminine, as in the cases of vez and paz.
Activists against perceived sexism in language are also concerned about words where the feminine form has a different (usually less prestigious) meaning:
- An ambiguous case is "secretary": a secretaria is an attendant for her boss or a typist, usually female, while a secretario is a high-rank position (as in secretario general del partido comunista), usually held by males. With the access of women to positions labelled as "secretary general" or similar, some have chosen to use the masculine gendered la secretario and others have to clarify that secretaria is a decision position, not a subordinate one.
- An offensive example is hombre público ("public man", a politician) and mujer pública ("public woman", a prostitute).
As in other Romance languages
Romance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
, it is traditional to use the masculine form of nouns and pronouns when referring to both males and females. Advocates of gender neutral languages modification consider this to be sexist and favor new ways of writing and speaking. Two methods have begun to come into use. One of them, seen most often in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
and Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, is to use the at-sign
At sign
The at sign , also called the ampersat, apetail, arroba, atmark, at symbol, commercial at or monkey tail, is formally an abbreviation of the accounting and commercial invoice term "at the rate of"...
(@) or the anarchist circled A (Ⓐ) to replace -o or -a, especially in radical political writing (¡Ciudadan@s!), but use of the slash (/) as in (el/la candidato/a) is more common. The ligature æ
Æ
Æ is a grapheme formed from the letters a and e. Originally a ligature representing a Latin diphthong, it has been promoted to the full status of a letter in the alphabets of some languages, including Danish, Faroese, Norwegian and Icelandic...
can be used in the same way (escritoræs for writers of both sexes, although escritores/as is more common). Opponents of such language modification feel that they are degrading to the language. Many also raise the question of how these new words are to be pronounced. See also Alternative political spellings.
Some politicians have begun to avoid perceived sexism in their speeches; the Mexican president Vicente Fox Quesada, for example, was famous for repeating gendered nouns in their masculine and feminine versions (ciudadanos y ciudadanas). This way of speaking is subject to parodies where new words with the opposite ending are created for the sole purpose of contrasting with the gendered word traditionally used for the common case (like *felizas and *especialistos in *felices y felizas or *las y los especialistas y especialistos).
Being very similar to Spanish, all considerations and almost all the examples above apply also to Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
. Minoritarian languages of this group can probably use expressions with at-sign (biólog@ in Galician
Galician-Portuguese
Galician-Portuguese or Old Portuguese was a West Iberian Romance language spoken in the Middle Ages, in the northwest area of the Iberian Peninsula. It was first spoken in the area bounded in the north and west by the Atlantic Ocean and the Douro River in the south but it was later extended south...
), ligature æ
Æ
Æ is a grapheme formed from the letters a and e. Originally a ligature representing a Latin diphthong, it has been promoted to the full status of a letter in the alphabets of some languages, including Danish, Faroese, Norwegian and Icelandic...
(outoræs in Mirandese language and autor/a in Aragonese language
Aragonese language
Aragonese is a Romance language now spoken in a number of local varieties by between 10,000 and 30,000 people over the valleys of the Aragón River, Sobrarbe and Ribagorza in Aragon, Spain...
).
Serbian
Like most other Slavic languagesSlavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
, Serbian
Serbian language
Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
has more obstacles to gender-neutral language modification than English. The Serbian language has different forms for masculine and feminine past tense: он је радио on je radio (he was working), она је радила ona je radila (she was working). Only the rare aorist
Aorist
Aorist is a philological term originally from Indo-European studies, referring to verb forms of various languages that are not necessarily related or similar in meaning...
(in Serbian the aorist is a tense, not an aspect) makes no distinction between genders. Also, all nouns in Serbian have grammatical gender: masculine, feminine or neuter. Almost all nouns which end with a consonant are masculine, almost all which end with a are feminine and almost all that end with o or e are neuter. Adjectives and verb aspects (but not in all tenses) inflect for gender, too.
Gender-neutral language advocates are also unhappy with Serbian's use of noun gender. Some masculine nouns signify an occupation, while the corresponding feminine nouns refer to objects: the masculine noun говорник govornik means "male speaker", while the cognate
Cognate
In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...
feminine noun говорница govornica means "female speaker", but also "podium", or a "speaker's platform"; masculine тренер trener means male coach, while the feminine word тренерка trenerka means "female coach", but also "warm-up suit".
Many feminists argue that in the Serbian language it is natural to differentiate the gender of job titles, as opposed to just using the masculine grammatical gender. Some of the language which they consider sexist includes: министар ministar for (male) minister and министарка ministarka for the wife of a minister, and професорка profesorka for the wife of professor instead of a female professor, etc. For example, they favor using учитељица učiteljica for "female teacher" (учитељ učitelj is "male teacher") and професорка profesorka for "female professor" (професор profesor is "male professor").
But many more traditional linguists, including women, argue that feminine names for occupations are not natural for the Serbian language. They feel that the masculine gender variants should be used, even when the professional in question is female.
Advocates of gender-neutral language find it difficult to avoid specifying gender in Serbian, since it is so built into the language. But one area where they have a bit more flexibility is the word "person," in its various forms: a person can be referred to as човек čovek ("human"; masculine gender), особа osoba ("person"; feminine gender) or људско биће ljudsko biće ("human being"; neuter gender).
Only plural forms have clear general meaning: професори profesori means both "male professors" and "female and male professors", but професорке profesorke means only "female professors". Many feminists prefer to say професори и професорке profesori i profesorke (male professors and female professors) and to write професори/ке profesori/ke.
Russian
RussianRussian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
intrinsically shares many of the same non-gender-neutral characteristics with other European languages.
Certain words are understood to refer to either men or women regardless of their grammatical gender. For example, человек ("human"; grammatically masculine), as opposed to мужчина ("man"; masculine with respect to agreement
Agreement (linguistics)
In languages, agreement or concord is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. Agreement happens when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates....
, but morphologically
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
feminine) and женщина ("woman"; feminine), and are in fact traditionally used in cases where gender-specific terms would be used in English. Several terms that roughly mean "person" are grammatically neuter or feminine, and can similarly be used to refer to either men or women: лицо (neuter, lit. "face"), персона (feminine), личность (feminine). All such terms have a bureaucratic connotation and are seldom used colloquially. Note also that as a general rule Russian does not use neuter terms for people, just as English does not use "it" as gender-neutral pronoun.
Job titles have a masculine and a feminine version in Russian, though in most cases the feminine version is only used in colloquial speech. The masculine form is typically treated as "unmarked
Markedness
Markedness is a specific kind of asymmetry relationship between elements of linguistic or conceptual structure. In a marked-unmarked relation, one term of an opposition is the broader, dominant one...
", i.e. it does not necessarily imply that the person is male, while the feminine form is "marked" and can only be used when referring to a woman. In some cases, the feminine title is derogatory or connotes a suboptimal performance and is only used as slang, e.g. врачиха (female doctor), директорша or sometimes директриса (female director). In other cases, this is not the case: актриса (actress), поэтесса (poetess; e.g. Anna Akhmatova
Anna Akhmatova
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko , better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova , was a Russian and Soviet modernist poet, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Russian canon.Harrington p11...
insisted to be called поэт instead). Even in cases where the feminine term is not seen as derogatory, however, there is a growing tendency to use masculine term in more formal contexts that stress the individual's membership in a profession: "В 15 лет она стала учителем фортепиано" ("At age 15 she became a piano teacher", formal register). The feminine form may be used in less formal context to stress a personal description the individual: "Настя стала учительницей" ("Nastia became a teacher", informal register).
For this reason, use of the masculine occupation terms when referring to women, is in fact seen as more politically correct and constitutes a growing trend. The actual gender of the person can still be indicated through the verb: for example, in the phrase врач посоветовала (the doctor/m advised/f), the gender of the verb shows that the doctor was female, even as the masculine (more respectful) occupation term is used. Note, however, that there are also some grammatically feminine terms with positive connotations that are routinely used for both men and women, for example, знаменитость (celebrity).
Russian adjectives are inflected
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
for grammatical gender and so are verbs in the past tense. When a masculine term is used to refer to a woman, the verb usually remains in the feminine, while adjectives and possessive pronouns may take either masculine or feminine form: наш новый врач посоветовала (our/m new/m doctor/m recommended/f) or наша новая врач посоветовала (our/f new/f doctor/m recommended/f). The former usage is more formal, while the latter is more colloquial.
The third-person pronoun typically reflects the actual gender of the person when this is known, врач сказала, что она... (the doctor/m said/f that she...), but typically agrees with the grammatical gender of its antecedent
Antecedent (grammar)
In grammar, an antecedent is a noun, noun phrase, or clause to which an anaphor refers in a coreference. For example, in the passage "I did not see John because he wasn't there", "John" is the antecedent of the anaphor "he"; together "John" and "he" are called a coreference because they both refer...
when an abstract person is discussed: Каждый врач должен помнить, что он... (Every/m doctor/m must/m remember that he...)
International auxiliary languages
- See also: International auxiliary languageInternational auxiliary languageAn international auxiliary language or interlanguage is a language meant for communication between people from different nations who do not share a common native language...
, Constructed languageConstructed languageA planned or constructed language—known colloquially as a conlang—is a language whose phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary has been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having evolved naturally...
Esperanto
EsperantoEsperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
follows the pattern of more natural languages, in assigning the male genders to specific roles (family member, aristocracy, etc.), and further deriving the female term from that. The generic form of nouns is the same as the male form and different from the female form — for example, doktoro(j) means "doctor(s)" (male or unspecified sex), while doktorino(j) means "female doctor". Some words, like patro (father), are intrinsically masculine, but there is no root word to express "a parent".
The prefix ge- may be used for groups of mixed sex, for example, gedoktoroj (male and female doctors). Reformers have used ge- to create explicitly sex-neutral singulars such as gepatro, "a parent". Though not generally adopted, this usage has appeared in some authoritative reference works.
Explicitly marked feminine forms such as doktorino may be used to emphasize the noun's female character, but unmarked forms are also commonly used for females. Reformers have proposed morphologically well-formed but rarely used forms like virdoktoro (literally "man-doctor") and neologisms like -iĉ- (doktoriĉo) to emphasize maleness. The first form is somewhat insufficient because viro traditionally means "man, male", but does not really show any male lexeme or morpheme, virino meaning "woman". This is discussed about, some people prefer viriĉo for "man, male" as opposed to virino.
Concerning pronouns there is much discussion: ŝi is clearly female, like English she. For male persons li is used and for (not personified) animals as well as for inanimate objects ĝi. It is not clear however what form to use when a person of unknown sex is spoken of. It is officially accepted, though very rarely practiced, to use ĝi in this case. Also li is officially accepted to refer to both sexes, what of course causes some opposition. There are some suggestions for neologisms like ŝli or ri. On the other hand some people consider li to be clearly sex-neutral, what requires a new only-male pronoun, e. g. hi.
Arguments about the character and implications of "gendered" or "sexist" features in Esperanto closely parallel those raised for other, particularly European languages.
Ido
IdoIdo
Ido is a constructed language created with the goal of becoming a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds as a language easier to learn than ethnic languages...
, a constructed language that is heavily based on Esperanto but seeks to avoid what some see as Esperanto's shortcomings, does not have this asymmetric sex-marking system. For example, frato means "brother" in Esperanto, but "sibling" in Ido. Ido nouns for kinds of people are sex-neutral in their ordinary form, but may be made either female- or male-specific by use of the suffixes -ino ("female", used as in Esperanto) and -ulo ("male", not to be confused with the same Esperanto suffix which means "person"). Examples: sekretario, secretary — sekretariulo, man secretary — sekretariino, woman secretary; doktoro, doctor — doktorulo, man doctor — doktorino, woman doctor. Thus, "sister" is fratino (the same as Esperanto), but brother is fratulo. Some communities use three separate words: patro ("father"), matro (mother) and genitoro (parent). Compare this with Esperanto patro, patrino and gepatroj respectively.
It also has an epicene pronoun lu, which, somewhat ambiguously, can refer to beings of any (or no) gender as well as inanimate objects. (The words "man", "woman", "baby", "goat", and "table" are all referred to by lu.)
Interlingua
InterlinguaInterlingua
Interlingua is an international auxiliary language , developed between 1937 and 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association...
is an auxiliary language that was developed to have a widely international vocabulary and a very simple grammar. In Interlingua, nouns have no gender except to reflect natural sex. For example, the words homine (man) and femina (woman) are masculine and feminine, respectively, but persona (person) has no gender. Adjectives are invariable and so never have to agree in gender with the nouns they modify. There is a separate nongender pronoun (illo, "it") and the possessive pronoun su ("his", "her" or "its") is gender-neutral.
Nouns such as professor and conductor denote both men and women, but specifically feminine forms such as professora conductora have been used occasionally over time. Interlingua has largely escaped charges of sexism, perhaps because the language changes easily as social values change.
See also
- Gender-neutral language in EnglishGender-neutral language in EnglishGender neutrality in English is a form of linguistic prescriptivism that aims at using a form of English that minimizes assumptions about the gender or biological sex of people referred to in speech.-Rationale:...
- Gender-neutrality in genderless languagesGender-neutrality in genderless languagesGender neutrality in genderless languages is typically achieved by using gender-inclusive words instead of gender-specific ones when one speaks of people whose gender is unknown, ambiguous, or unimportant...
- Gender-neutral pronounGender-neutral pronounA gender-neutral pronoun is a pronoun that is not associated with any gender. It designates two distinct grammatical phenomena, the first being pronouns/periphrastics that have been assigned nontraditional meanings in modern times out of a concern for gender equity, and the second being genderless...
- Gender roleGender roleGender roles refer to the set of social and behavioral norms that are considered to be socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex in the context of a specific culture, which differ widely between cultures and over time...
- Grammatical genderGrammatical genderGrammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
- IGALAIGALAThe International Gender and Language Group, or IGALA, is an international interdisciplinary organization that promote research on language, gender, and sexuality. The association was formed in 1999, and developed out of the graduate-student-run Berkeley Women and Language Group...
(International Gender and Language Group) - MarkednessMarkednessMarkedness is a specific kind of asymmetry relationship between elements of linguistic or conceptual structure. In a marked-unmarked relation, one term of an opposition is the broader, dominant one...