Inclusive Language and Grammatical Gender

Over the past few days, I have read many articles about the debates on how to make Spanish a more inclusive language. A recent debate started with the aim to rewrite the Spanish constitution using inclusive language, and for this debate, the RAE (initials of Royal Spanish Academy in Spanish) was formally consulted. Different solutions have been suggested, but the main issue they try to overcome is the existence of 2 genders, masculine and feminine, in which nouns are classified.  

But during my research, I found similar debates in different languages: French and Italian, languages that share with Spanish the existence of 2 genders, and in English, although a genderless language, still some terms gender-related exist, like the 3^rd person pronouns “he”, “she” and “it”. Recently in my Home country, Canada, the federal Parliament voted to change 2 words of the English lyrics of our national anthem to make it more inclusive (The French lyrics did not change). But my surprise was even greater when I found that this debate has reached languages such as Arabic and Hebrew.

Let’s talk first about what is Gender: according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary gender is “a subclass within a grammatical class (such as noun, pronoun, ...) of a language that is partly arbitrary but also partly based on distinguishable characteristics and that determines agreement with and selection of other words or grammatical forms…”. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica Gender “Is a phenomenon in which the words of a certain part of speech, usually, nouns, require the agreement, or concord, through grammatical marking, of various other words related to them in a sentence…”

In Indo-European languages, we can see languages with 2 genders, 3 genders or none. We mention that languages such as Spanish, French and Italian have 2 genders; Languages such as Russian and German has 3 genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. Persian and Bengali have no grammatical gender. Dutch has 2 genders, but they are common and neuter (masculine and feminine have merged into a common gender).  

Some languages outside the Indo-European family follow similar patterns. Languages like Arabic and Hebrew have 2 genders: masculine and feminine. Languages like Chinese, Turkish and Hungarian have no grammatical gender. But there are other languages where grammatical genders play a very different role: in Basque and Ojibway, there are 2 genders which are animate and inanimate. But we can see languages with more grammatical genders like Fula, a Nigerian-Congo language that has around 20 genders, Arapesh, a Papuan language with 13 genders.

As we can see, gender is actually not related to sex. The use of masculine rather than a generic gender was the norm in many languages. But some feminists and other political groups argue that this practice is a symptom that the language reflects the prejudices of a male-centred society and they made activism in order to reform language and make it gender-neutral and make it inclusive for all sexes and genders. Today, the activism of other minority groups who identify themselves as neither masculine nor feminine has fuelled this debate and many governments and academic groups are now working to make communications at all level less sexist, more gender-neutral and more inclusive.

Now it is more common to see recommendations not to use titles and to avoid gendered pronouns. Other measures are proposed as well depending on the language affected.

The gender-inclusive language is defined as to communicate in a way that does not discriminate against a particular sex, social gender or gender identity. The United Nations has official guidelines for Gender-inclusive language to be used in their 6 official languages. Here you can read their guidelines in English. The European parliament has its own general guidelines to be used in its publications. 

There are other concepts that recently entered the linguistic debates. Gender-neutral language (épicène in French) is the language whose redaction assures equal representation for males and females. Another concept is Non-binary language, whose redaction respects the need of certain people to be identified with a gender that is not male nor female. 

Regarding the debates happening in different languages, you can read some examples in an article recently published by the Washington Post. 

In my article, I am going to focus on the proposals that exist in 3 languages that I know well, all of them gendered. In my article, I talk mainly about the attempts to make those languages Gender Neutral and Non-Binary.

Spanish

Spanish has two grammatical genders: feminine and masculine. Every article, noun or adjective are all either feminine or masculine. Every noun is tied to an article, either “el” or “la” (in plural can be “los” or “las”). Adjectives in Spanish agree with the noun they modify in gender and number. I can say phrases like:

-The small cat:         “El gato pequeño” (masculine)   or    “La gata pequeña” (feminine)

In plural we say:      “Los gatos pequeños”   or    “Las gatas pequeñas”.

But when genders are mixed, the default plural form is masculine. So the word “gatos” can also talk about a group of cats regardless of their real sex. It is customary to use the masculine form as default when we are not sure about the sex of the cat. 

You can drive “el carro deportivo” (sports car, masculine) wearing “la camisa deportiva” (sports shirt, feminine). Abstract words are also gendered; we can have “El pensamiento positivo” (the positive thinking) or “La mente positiva” (the positive mind).

In order to avoid gendering words, one of the first solutions proposed was to use the letter “X”, and one of the first words to become popular was “Latinx” a gender-neutral neologism to refer to people of Latin American cultural or ethnical identity, substituting the terms “Latino” or “Latina”.  You can also find “Latin@”. This idea was soon used with other Spanish words: Example, instead of using “amigo” or “amiga”, we can use a more gender-neutral word like “amigx”. Although this idea became popular in the US, it never gained popularity in Latin America or Spain. The Spanish language does not favor the consecutive use of 2 or more consonants in the same word. The “x” for Spanish speakers very often alludes to something unknown, an enigma. But the main point against the proposition is that confuses native Spanish speakers living outside the US who would not know how to pronounce it. No need to mention that this is a solution coming from a non-Spanish speaking country, and native Spanish speakers are not always willing to accept such ideas. The Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (DRAE in Spanish) does not accept this idea. But it is interesting to see that it is accepted in English dictionaries of prestige, like the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster Dictionary. 

In Argentina, young people are changing the way they speak and write replacing the masculine “o” (amigo) or the feminine “a” (amiga) with a gender-neutral “e”. For example, it mentions the word “amigue” (the “u” letter in this context is mute, and is used to retain the hard sound of “g”).  It is common now to hear phrases like: “todes les diputades” instead of “todos los diputados” (meaning: all the MPs). A new pronoun was added by those who speak in this way: “Elle”, used alongside with “El” or “Ella”, and their respective plural versions of “Elles”, “Ellos” and “Ellas”. In this context, to say “Elles van a la playa” is like saying “they are going to the beach” using a gender-neutral phrase. You can read more in any News site from Argentina or international news sites in Spanish, to learn more.       

The use of gendered-neutral words with “e” in Spanish is not accepted by the RAE. We can notice some use of this in other neighboring countries like Chile and Uruguay and there are many schools where this practice is tolerated. The University of Buenos Aires (UBA) accepts documents that use the non-gendered “e” and there are other universities in this country where this is partially or totally accepted for dissertations, assignments, and publications. But generally speaking, this remains alien to most Spanish speakers in the world. 

At the beginning of my article, I highlighted the debate to rewrite the Spanish constitution. One of the proposals is to use double forms to replace the generic masculine. As an example, if a phrase starts with: “los españoles tienen el deber de …” it would start with: “los españoles y las españolas tienen el deber de …” (“the Spaniards have the duty of …”) including men and women. The RAE also is against this remodeling, but they support the double form of the word “King” to include “Queen” (“Rey” and “Reina” respectively) and the apparent reason is to make it clear that the Spanish constitution accepts that a Queen can be the Head of State. 

You can read here the explanations given by the Spanish Academy in this and other solutions proposed for inclusive language 

French

French also assigns a gender to every noun and the rules tend to be the same used in Spanish (Although between both languages there’s no agreement on the list of words belonging to each gender).

I am going to use the French word for “Citizen”.

-Le citoyen (MSing)                        -La citoyenne (FSing)

-Les citoyens (MPl)                         -Les citoyennes (FPl)

We can say: « Un citoyen français » (a French citizen, masculine) or « une citoyenne française » (fem). But when genders are mixed, the default plural form is masculine

All the words have a gender assigned. You can live in « une maison blanche » (a white house) or in « un château blanc » (a white castle).

The government of Canada and the Office québécois de la langue française have published guidelines for gender-inclusive writing and you can read them in English and french 

Some of the recommendations for the French language are: to use gender-inclusive nouns and adjectives, to mention both genders or use collective nouns.

But there are some propositions of what should be a Non-binary French language. Let’s take the word for teacher:  enseignant (MSing), enseignante (FSing), enseignants (MPl), enseignantes (FPl). A non binary form is to use: « enseignant·e » (NSing) and « enseignat·e·s » (NPl).

Some texts consulted use the example of the word “Student”:

-étudiant (MSing)                                        -étudiante (FSing) 

-étudiants (MPl)                                           -étudiantes (FPl) 

-étudiant·e (NSing)                                     -étudiant·e·s (NPl) 

New terms have been proposed for a non-binary language that very often are a mix of the current gendered words: I mention the word for translator: « traducteur » (MSing), « traductrice » (FSing). The Neutral version is « traducteurice ».

For 3^rd person personal pronoun, French language uses “Il” for “he” and “Elle” for “she”. For a neutral one one of the propositions is “Iel”. Now some examples: “He/she is a qualified translator”. In French:

-Il est un traducteur agréé. (MSing)

-Elle est une traductrice agréée. (FSing)

-Iel est un·e traducteurice agréé·e. (NSing)

Perhaps the word that had more impact on me was the Neutral-gendered word for sibling: « frœur », a mix of « frère / sœur ».

-ma sœur est très belle => Non binary phrase : -maon frœur est très belleau  

A feminine sentence was then transformed into a non-binary one.

A more complete list plus other propositions can be read in a paper written in 2019 by Florence Ashley for Mcgill University 

The Académie Française rejects the propositions for gender-neutral language or non-binary language. The French government bans the use of this language in official documents. The government of Canada has a different approach to having its own guidelines for inclusive language. But the same guides avoid the use of truncated forms of the words and there is no mention to neologisms created for this purpose.  

Hebrew

The case of the Hebrew language is even more complex because this language not only assigns gender to nouns and adjectives, but to verbs as well. Hebrew has 2 genders: masculine and feminine. Nouns, verb conjugation and adjective must agree in gender and number in a sentence.

As an example, I will write the word in Hebrew for student:

-Student (MSing): תַּלְמִיד [Talmid]                        -Student (FSing): תַּלְמִידָה  [Talmidah]

-Students (MPl): תַּלְמִידִים [Talmidim]                   -Students (FPl): תַּלְמִידוֹת [Talmidot]

Words have gender. The word “Star”, כּוֹכָב [Kokhav] is masculine. The word “Country”, אֶרֶץ [Eretz] is feminine.

Let’s see the conjugation of a verb. I will use an example in the second person:

-You write:

אַתָּה כּוֹתֵב [Ata kotev] (MSing)                                אַתְּ כּוֹתֵבֶת [At kotevet] (FSing)

אַתֶּם כּוֹתְבִים  [Atem kotvim] (MPl)                          אַתֶּן כּוֹתְבוֹת [Aten kotvot] (MSing)

An American college student, Lior Gross, and Eyal Rivlin, a Hebrew instructor from the University of Colorado Boulder developed a non-binary Hebrew system. This idea got the attention of Hebrew speakers in Israel and the US starting an interesting debate. The idea is to introduce a new set of pronouns and terminations that are suitable for referring to people who do not identify themselves as members of the two traditional genders.

Using the examples provided in this section, the proposed additions are:

-Student (NSing): תַּלְמִידֶה [Talmideh]      - Students (NPl): תַּלְמִידִימוֹת [Talmidimot]           

The plural is a combination of the existent regular plurals in Hebrew, “-im” for masculine and “-ot” for the feminine.

For verb conjugation, we use the same example of “You write”:

אַתֶּה כּוֹתֶבֶה [Ate koteveh] (NSing)             אַתֶּמֵן כּוֹתְבִימוֹת [Atemen kotvimot] (NPl)   

Because this system is much more complex than I can describe here, I leave here the link for those who want to find more information about this proposal. 

I read different points of view on this idea of non-binary Hebrew. In the USA, except for some very conservative or religious groups, this idea has been well received. But the story is different if we talk about Israel, where most people reject it, including members of LGBTQ communities. Perhaps the main point against is that the idea has been worked and developed in the USA and not in Israel, where most of the speakers will have to deal with it. Some people argue that this will make the Hebrew language more complicated.

The Academy of the Hebrew Language, the highest institution in terms of establishing the right way to speak and write, has shown no interest to even discuss this and other alternatives of inclusive Hebrew. The government of Israel usually follows the resolutions coming from this institute. 

We have to consider that Hebrew is not only the language of Israel but is the language of the Bible, of the ancient texts and liturgy of the Jewish religion. It is part of the connection the Jewish people feel with their spirituality and traditions. When Modern Hebrew was revived (this work is credited to Eliezer Ben Yehuda), great care was taken to keep the vocabulary and grammar as close as possible to the ancient language.

In my opinion, most of this discussion takes place for political reasons rather than linguistic. If you want to promote a more inclusive language to prevent any form of discrimination in communication, we need to educate and not change the language itself. As a native Spanish speaker, I feel that some of the existing propositions are trying to create a language that instead of promoting communication is creating something strange, less understandable for its speakers.  

For languages like French and Spanish with millions of speakers in different countries this could be a divisive factor.

Changes in a language cannot be imposed by a government on people who speak the language, from top to bottom, but from the people who use the language, according to their needs.  

My opinion, however, does not apply equally to all the languages. There are specific considerations when discussing which are the best strategies when recommending the use of inclusive language, and they are related to the time, the language in discussion and the country concerned. My opinion focuses mostly on Spanish, my native language, and to some extent in the cases of French and Hebrew language.  

Although I disagree with those groups that try to change the grammar of a language based on the simple fact that they do not feel that they fit into any of the existing grammatical categories, I agree with them that they can create their own way of communicating if they wish to do so. But I agree with the main academies of the different languages, like the RAE, that they have no authority to impose any way to speak or use the language but they are just like notaries that record the changes in the use of a language system. They cannot register a Gender-Neutral language just to please a minority group. Trying to argue with them is a waste of time.

Languages do not discriminate. People themselves can discriminate against others based on their own prejudices and misconceptions and it is through education and awareness that this can be changed. I do not believe that people who speak in gendered languages have a higher tendency to discriminate against others.  

In my opinion, at least in Spanish, which is my mother tongue, inclusive language could be promoting exclusion.