Yeah! Nothing's set in stone, and it's a good base for a more gender-inclusive vision of the language, imho.
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French dictionary accused of "wokeism" over gender-inclusive pronoun
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Yeah! Nothing's set in stone, and it's a good base for a more gender-inclusive vision of the language, imho.
Sure you can, but at some point it becomes extremely limitative to use these words over and over again, and it also causes some confusion where you need to add more words to describe something that could be describe in one word. Going for gender inclusive terms as a whole is good, it doesn't change the fact that the language is not based around that. There's a reason words exist.
If you want to refer to someone who makes pastry for a living, you're gonna refer to them as "Pâtissiers/Pâtissières". You could always refer to them as "Les gens qui font de la pâtisserie", or "Les personnes qui font de la pâtisserie", but then you could refer to someone doing it as a hobby, someone who did pastry last night. You could always add something like "Les gens qui font de la pâtisserie de manière professionnelle", still makes you use like 10 words when one could have done the trick. That's why inclusive language is a variation of "Pâtissier.ères", but it makes for a language that becomes hard to read, and sentences that don't flow very well. It's also pretty impossible to use vocally.
The words you've described have purpose, they're just limited in this context.
I honestly think you come from a place where you do not speak the language and don't understand what you're talking about. We're not talking about slight changes here, we're talking about literally changing the foundation of how it works and how people speak/write it. It's not only something you can't change overnight, it's something you change over generations.
Yeah, it's a bit of a pain to say, more often than not you just hear "elle".
Obviously this might differ depending on different languages, but pretty sure the French standard currently follows the latin standard (since unlike slavic it's part of the romantic language family) where this would apply. Like looking it up -a is masculine and -e is feminine, so to to create a gender neutral version you could just use some other ending like -u or -o. Obviously there are exceptions, but this would work for a large majority of words in French. And again this discussion was never about how to incorporate gender-neutral language but always about the merits of the endeavor in the first place
Always this lame rhetoric in this place. I wasn't justifying anything. The majority of users here are English speakers, so I thought it might be helpful to provide some context.
Anyone who wants this pronoun to be established should also think about the linguistic consequences it entails. What do you do about adjectives and articles? If you want to call a non-binary person beautiful, do you say "beau" or "belle", or do you create a new form (and the same for every adjective in the entire lexicon of the language)? And then there's nouns, which are also lacking a third form. These are huge obstacles for a wide-spread adoption of a new category into the grammar of the language.
Uh, yes, that's exactly what it means for any word class that isn't a verb. No offense, but you don't really seem to know what you're talking about...
Ouais, et disons que c'est pas aider par le fait que les Américains en général ont absolument aucune idée de comment le français marche en tant que langue et pensent que c'est simplement un cas de changer quelques mots par-ci par là et magie.
To your first point: including a gender neutral pronoun does mean you have to change every other word. There is no neutral version of most professions, adjectives and nouns in french. Even some conjugating is gendered. I can't talk in neutral terms with by just changing their pronoun. I would have to make choices if i wanted to describe them, adress them or talk about where they are and what they are doing, that would mean using gendered language.
And well sadly french is pretty different from other latin languages like spanish, portuguese or italian. In french the closest thing we have from a "suffix" is that feminine words tend to have an "e" somewhere. So finding a gender neutral version of pairs like "beau/belle", "fou/folle", "nouveau/nouvelle" or "sec/sèche" is gonna be pretty hard.
And I think it is pertinent to the discussion in here because the crux of it is that we're talking about a new pronoun here, not a neutral one already existing that is being repurposed. So you see it's super easy for someone to position themselves as a defender of the language to stifle progress towards a more inclusive way of speaking.
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I was talking purely about the ease of creating new words. Obviously from a more broad societal context it would take a long ass time because of issues of adoption and cultural changes, but in terms of actually making new words I don't think that's where the challenge lies, it's getting them used
I'd argue that as long as the language has distinct rules for how to distinguish between masculine and feminine versions of a noun or adjective it's less creating new words and more creating a new set of rules. Like in English you could get around something like sorcerer/sorceress by adding a new ending like Sorcero. Creating a new form isn't actually that hard as long as forms are generally standardized, which tends to be the case with most words. And because a form can be applied to almost any word, the amount of actual new changes you need to make is way smaller
Hell, if you want to discuss the easiest way to make a language like french gender neutral, you could theoretically just get rid of half of the dictionary and not create anything new. Basically just make one form the default that can be applied to either gender. Obviously in terms of actually getting society to use and accept that change it would take a ton of time, but if we're just discussing ways to make the change happen from a purely technical perspective it isn't actually difficult at all
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So far there are basically two solutions to remedy the lack of neutral words:
1/ The person chooses not only a preferred pronoun but also a preferred way to conjugate it. So, depending on their preferences, you could say "iel est beau" or "iel est belle".
or
2/ The person can prefer not only the neutral pronoun but also a neutral conjugation (which in general is a portmanteau of the masculine and feminine words). So in this case you would say "iel est belleau".
At least "fofolle" is already in use ;)
Out of curiosity, how is the "-eur" -"euse" solved?
In my language (greek) we mainly use the gender of the noun that the foreign work refers to.
For example COVID is a virus so it would take the gender of the word virus.
Interestingly enough in greek we have a neutral gender for some nouns and there was a case here of a non-binary person who went to court because they wanted to be addressed by the neutral gender and won the case!
Having said that even some other non-binary people here don't agree with this because it just sounds weird in Greek because we mainly use this gender to refer to some objects, animals e.t.c.
Also it is difficult to use the equivalent of the english "they" because it is pronounced exactly the same as "she" but written differently…
The secret here is that they don't actually care that much about language itself, they're just using it as a battleground for broader ideologies. New words are added to languages all the time by necessity, but people tend to only complain when it coincides with the idea that they themselves need to change. Adding a word for a new technology tends not to bother people, but changes in language that lead to them having to reexamine themselves and their own words and actions tend to. Plus the general aversion to change. What they really don't want to change is their current status quo, the language evolving is just an easy reminder that the world itself is changing,
Covid is not the virus, it's the disease caused by the virus ;). Like HIV and AIDS. And because disease is feminine in french some say covid has to be feminine.
They literally invent new French words to avoid borrowed words.
A...gotcha.
Well we mostly equate COVID with Corona virus as a word (even if it's not the same as you said) so we use the the same gender.
This happens all the time actualy with languages :P
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It's the same in French actually, but some people argue COVID means the virus while some people argue it means the disease...
EDIT: Beaten like Blanquer at the regional elections
which would be obvious if you actually paid attention to science since the virus already has it's own name, it's SARS-Cov-2 and COVID is just an acronym for "coronavirus disease"
I've always pronounced it as "yell" which imo sounds different enough from the other two forms
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Well it's not that obvious IMO. There are inconsistencies however I look at it.
For example, remember the SARS epidemic in 2003? How come back then the virus was "SARS-COV" and we talked about a "SARS" disease, but now we have the virus "SARS-COV-2" yet we don't call the disease "SARS-2" or whatever?
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I was thinking of the English word "yell" but that works
But yeah maybe if you don't articulate the "i" sound enough, people will mishear.
From a phonological pov, él would have been better to make sure people notice the differences, since "é" is right in the middle of the "i" sound in "il" and the "è" sound in "elle". But that's not how words are created
If "iel" is too often misheard as another word, people will naturally alter its pronunciation to something more distinctive. We're still in the early days of the word, so we'll see how/if it changes.
Honestly, we should do the same in Germany. Sweden already did it with "hen"
Just don't know what could work. Er, sie, ...?
Just don't know what could work. Er, sie, ...?
Nobody looks at language purely technically. It has to roll of the tongue.
Also, TERFs would have a field day with that. In German, there are ongoing efforts to always use both gendered forms, so as to avoid the generic masculinum. And it already is an uphill battle btw, because it doesn't roll of the tongue.
Worse in German, it's spelt exactly the same (also used capitalised for a formal "you").
I've heard once of "sier", but I don't know about its proliferation.
Again, this is not about creating new forms, it's about changing the foundations of the grammatical system. Maybe, just maybe, you should listen to people who actually speak the language and understand what's being talked about. French is very far removed from Latin, more so than the other Romance languages. Knowledge of Latin will help you understand French vocabulary and etymology, it won't help when it comes to understanding modern French grammar.
As for your second proposal, that's a nice hypothetical that has no chance of happening. It would also mean erasing either the masculine or feminine form from the language, not sure if that's the way to go about it... I'd say it would be more useful to discuss practical solutions that have a chance of happening.
"Er" is masculine, "sie" is both singular feminine and second and third person plural, so neither would work. "Es" obviously won't work because it's derogatory. You'd have to create a new word. English really is easy mode with "they/them" and ungendered articles and adjectives.
I say we ditch them all and use English instead, they're rotten to the core.
And yet we (English speakers) borrow from everyone. Fuck it! Why not?
Yes of course, this guy represent the whole country and how they think.
/s
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I think it's now owned by Bolloré, who is even more reactionary.
The last complete edition of its dictionary is older than most people's grandparents (it was published in 1930...) and the current edition is far for finished (they are currently working on the letter S...) 🤓
For those who understand French, this video about the Académie is a must watch
More exception than rules is almost the motto of the French language 😁
And one important thing (I don't know if it's specific to French or not), but current French is the result of many voluntary changes, centuries old changes enacted for the sole reason to make women invisible. I'll get back to it in a moment.
Having said that, French does have broad categories where one rule dictates how you, knowing one form, can write the other. Some of those categories already have non-official gender-neutral forms but I have no idea if they are covering a majority of the words or not. One example is acteur/actrice/acteurice (actor/actress/I don't know if a genderless word exists in English), so -teur / -trice / -teurice.
A couple of examples.
"Brad Pitt is an actor" is translated "Brad Pitt est un acteur" while "Angelina Jolie is an actress" is translated "Angelina Jolie est une actrice". No French-speaking person will find the word actrice strange. And plenty of -teur words work exactly like that :
- postman/postwoman: facteur / factrice
- director: directeur/directrice
So, "John Scalzi is an author" is translated "John Scalzi est un auteur". You would think that if someone was speaking about a woman, someone would say, "Ursula K. Le Guin est une autrice". And a couple of centuries ago, you would have been perfectly right. But for a long time, "autrice" was not used anymore and now, many people may find it strange to use and some will use "auteure" (which has the mysoginistic "advantage" of being pronounced exactly like "auteur"). Currently, those two are competing with each others, and even with auteur because those changes included making masculine the neutral gender in French and stating that titles are not related to the gender of the people who have them.
If your family doctor is a man and you are visiting him, you will say to your friends "Je vais chez mon docteur" or "Je vais chez mon médecin". And if it's a woman ? You would think that you could said "Je vais chez ma doctrice" or "Je vais chez ma médecine" (and maybe other French-speaking countries are saying it this way), but in France, doctrice is almost never used (doctoresse is used in place, but carry a negative undertone and is, maybe for this reason, rarely used) and médecine, well, it's the discipline itself.
Another change (which is mostly reversed), un Président is really a President, but une Présidente, well, for a long time it was the wife of un Président, the same way une Générale was the wife of un Général. Which is responsible for stupid translation mistakes like the one made in one of the Honor Harrington books where the translator decided to use the masculine form of military titles even when those titles were attached to women... which made no sense in the context of a fully egalitarian society. Or the one made by Blizzard, who decided that Paladin couldn't be used in a feminine form, which created ridiculous quest texts with one phrase where everything was in masculine form because Paladin was used in that phrase, and the next everything was in feminine form because the game remembered it was about a female paladin... Paladine works perfectly fine, especially knowing that Blizzard decided to call one of the warlock's demon, une succube which is technically incorrect, because, it's a masculine word in French... but they thought people would find strange to say "un succube" about an almost naked female demon...).
In the same fashion, some words mean something (usually positive) in their masculine form and a different thing in their feminine form. Speaking about a football team's trainer, you would say "un entraineur de foot", but if your football team's trainer is a woman, it's still best to wait to see if she is calling herself "une entraineuse", because, for a long time, "une entraineuse" was a scantily dressed woman in a bar, seducing men to make them drink a lot.
Another (last) example, if a child is speaking to their schoolteacher (up until the end of the elementary school), they would say "Maitre/Maitresse". But, while you would call a male lawyer "Maitre", "Maitresse" is not used to speak about a female lawyer, "Maitre" is also used for them.
So, a long post to say it's a bit more complicated than you may think. But at the same time, I don't think it's as complicated as others who are answering you, think.
But none of what you wrote gives us any indication on how we would go about to create a neutral version of any of those words. You're just underlying how sexist the language is, but solving the problem of how to properly adress women is different than managing to talk to/about people in a neutral way.
Saying this ignores that English used to be a gendered language, but interaction with other cultures caused people to essentially obliterate it from the language over a relatively short period of time (around 200 years). In fact, "they" was borrowed from Norse cultures, so it seems like it is possible for a group of people to borrow inclusive language. They did it 800 years ago
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"Il est devenu habituel que les femmes aient une situation sociale autre que celle qui tient au métier ou à la fonction de leur mari". Omg hahaha
This seems like as good a place to ask as any. I'm learning French via Duolingo and the whole gender assignment of objects really throws me off.
Why is an orange or pizza feminine? And why is a croissant masculine? How am I supposed to know what objects have what gender assigned to them? It feels extremely arbitrary and I'm not seeing any kind of pattern lol.
Why is an orange or pizza feminine? And why is a croissant masculine? How am I supposed to know what objects have what gender assigned to them? It feels extremely arbitrary and I'm not seeing any kind of pattern lol.
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It is completely arbitrary. You can't really guess them unfortunately
There is no pattern, you'll just sound goofy for french people in the forseable future sorry ;)
To make you feel better, French people struggle a lot with how to write french.
The same way that you learn genders in English.
You learn them through usage, really. You'll have to look them up until you know. Maybe it helps to assume sexism.
Oh, one thing though, -a (esp. in Italian & Spanish) is mostly a feminine suffix, from Latin. I also assume if it were femininum, it would be croissante (also see -euse, -elle).
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Like some mentioned, it's arbitrary unfortunately, and in some rare cases, people can't decide on what gender to use for certain words(depending on the region I guess).
Here in Quebec, some people say "le bus", while others say "la bus". 🤣 Unless you grew up with French, I'm guessing it's near impossible for someone learning French to know every genders even if otherwise they speak the language just fine.
The word "amour" (love) is masculine when singular and sometimes feminine when plural.
That part explain how we would deal with some words:
Like I said, I don't know if it takes care of the majority of them or not, but many words are following the same rule and adding a genderless suffix to one rule takes care of all the words following it.
Sur le sujet, une solution simple est de... simplement ignorer la question :
Baroud d’honneur – Le cas Taka
D’habitude je suis plutôt ravi de parler des trads effectuées sur des romans Star Wars. Cette fois, le plaisir d’annoncer la sortie d’un ouvrage s’accompagne toutefois dR…
sandyjulien.com
If you are fluent enough in French, this blog post is hilarious to read:
Amour(s), délice(s) et orgue(s)
Un GRAND orgue, mais les GRANDES orgues! Un jour, un bon ami à moi me demande si je sais pourquoi amour(s), délice(s) et orgue(s) sont masculins au singulier et féminins au pluriel. V…
rouleaum.wordpress.com
If you are not, it's about words that can be either masculine or feminine depending on if they are used as singular or plural, or even funnier, if they are used to describe the object itself, or the place / enterprise who are making that object. The big organs of a church are feminine (les grandes orgues), but the company who made them will be called une fabrique de grands orgues (masculine form). And if you speak about a small organ (still the music instrument), it's un orgue.
To answer your question, it's arbitrary even if some people tried to make sense of it. Some of those people messed up the situation more because they were more concerned by making prestigious words masculine, or finding prestigious roots to those words. An example of the latter is nénufar (lily pad), which was written exactly like that between 1762 and 1935. In 1935, the Académie decided to write it nénuphar 🤷. And in 1990, a reform said it would be best to go back to nénufar, which is more logical with the roots of the word than nénuphar (by the way, it's un nénufar). Now, both ways of writing it are correct 🤷
And honestly, just learn them as you encounter them without stressing too much about them. Outside of speaking with pedantic people (they do exist, sadly), most French people will not care about that kind of mistake: outside of some rare cases, it doesn't really matter to say le table instead of la table. Sure, it'll "betray" to them that you are a stranger (if your accent didn't betray you already), but you are also a stranger speaking their language.