Gender-neutral language

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Gender-neutral language (gender-generic, gender-inclusive, non-sexist, or sex-neutral language) is language that attempts to refer neither to males nor females when discussing an abstract or hypothetical person whose sex cannot otherwise be determined. This most commonly means using gender-neutral pronouns instead of gender-specific pronouns. In most Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic languages, male pronouns have traditionally been used when referring to both genders or to a person or people of an unknown gender.

Contents 1 Examples 2 Common positions 3 History 4 Disputed issues 4.1 Are some uses of language inherently sexist? 4.2 Enforcement, persuasion, or evolution? 4.3 Neologising 5 Guidelines 6 Gender neutral language modification in other languages 6.1 Basque 6.2 Chinese 6.3 Esperanto 6.4 Finnish 6.5 French 6.6 German 6.7 Hebrew 6.8 Hungarian 6.9 Italian 6.10 Japanese 6.11 Korean 6.12 Russian 6.13 Serbian 6.14 Spanish 6.15 Swedish 6.16 Tagalog 6.17 Tamil 6.18 Turkish 7 See also 8 References 9 External links

Examples

One might state, "Tomorrow I will meet my new doctor; I hope he is friendly."; however, unless one is certain that the new doctor is a man, advocates of gender-neutral language generally argue that it would be better to state, "Tomorrow I will meet my new doctor, who I hope is friendly".

Critics argue that this creates an undue burden on the speaker by forcing a change to the structure of the sentence, with the result often being rather awkward. They would cite the above example as a case in point, as it seems rather contrived, since non-defining relative clauses are extremely rare in everyday speech. (Colloquially speaking, the speech given in this example would often be described as sounding like the speaker was "talking like a book". In casual conversation, a person would be more likely to use the first example, or to say "Tomorrow I will meet my new doctor; I hope they're friendly". This is use of the singular they as a gender-neutral pronoun.)

A business might advertise that it is looking for a new chair or chairperson, rather than chairman, which gender-neutral language advocates feel would imply that only a man would be acceptable for the position. Some advocates of gender-neutral language see it as unobjectionable to use gender-specific terms provided they are equally applied. For instance (continuing the example), one could refer to a male in such a position as a chairman, provided that a female would be referred to by the equivalent term chairwoman. Others claim, however, that the sex of the occupant of the chair is irrelevant and thus chairperson or chair are the only acceptable terms. (It is perhaps worth noting that traditionally the term chairman has explicitly included females, such a person being addressed as Madam Chairman rather than Mr Chairman.)

Common positions

Views among advocates of gender-neutral language are spread over a wide range, from passionate argumentation in favour, to consistent use in their own speech and writing, to occasional use. However, most people simply decide for themselves whether or not to use it in their writing.

A great many people have no opinion on gender-neutral language and make no special effort to avoid what advocates may describe as sexist language. However, many terms advocated or proposed by advocates of gender-neutral language, such as firefighter or he or she, have entered the common lexicon (in some cases, before advocacy of gender-neutral language began), and may be used by those who do not have any particular feeling about the subject.

Still others regard gender-neutral language as revisionist, as promoting poor or heavy writing, excessively "politically correct," or simply a cosmetic change that does nothing to actually repel sexism. They may consciously refuse to use forms of speech advocated by promoters of gender-neutral language.

Some advocates of gender-neutral language do not consider the argument of sexism. Instead, they believe the language should be neutral to make it more aesthetically pleasing: assymetry in the usage of genders makes the language ugly.

History

Many of the masculine terms in Modern English come from gender neutral words in Old English. For example, the word mann was gender-neutral in Old English (though grammatically masculine) and could be used to refer to any adult human. For gender-specific usage, "wer" could be used to mean "man", and "wíf" to mean "woman". Since then "man" replaced "wer" as the the primary word refering to male persons, while also preserving its original gender-neutral meaning (people), especially in compounds such as mankind. Meanwhile, the word "woman" (from "wífman", grammatically masciline) replaced "wíf" as the word for female person.

Both Ancient Greek and Classical Latin show a similar process for anthropos and homo respectively. Both of these words mean "man/humanity in general" or "human being": as in the modern anthropology or homo sapiens. For "male human as opposed to female human", there exist the separate words aner (andros-) and vir (roots of the English androgen and virile, respectively).

Most modern descendants of the Latin homo such as French homme, Italian uomo, and Spanish hombre are grammatically masculine and contain two meanings: 1) a male human and 2) any human being (e.g. French Musée de l'homme for an anthropology museum exhibiting human culture, not specifically "male culture"). These languages therefore lack a third, neutral option between the gender-specific words for man and woman as homo or anthropos provided. 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 (bǎrbat and femeie, respectively).

The word human is from Latin humanus, the adjectival form of homo.

During the 19th century, attempts to overlay Latin grammar rules onto English required the use of feminine endings in nouns ending with -or. This produced words like doctress and professress and even lawyeress, all of which have faded from use; though waitress, stewardess, and actress persist.

Belief in social effects of language was largely a 20th century phenomenon in the English-speaking world, and has been linked to the development of the principle of linguistic relativity by Benjamin Whorf and others.

Disputed issues

There are a wide range of disputed issues in the debate over 'non-sexist language'. Are there inherently sexist language forms, and if so, what are they? If they exist, should they be changed? If they should be changed, how should this be achieved?

Are some uses of language inherently sexist?

Some advocates of gender-neutral language, including many feminists, argue that traditional language fails to reflect the presence of women in society adequately. In general, they complain about a number of issues:

• Use of what they consider to be exclusively gender-specific pronouns like "he".
• Use of "man" to refer to all people. (eg, "mankind")
• Use of gender-specific job titles.
• Use of Miss and Mrs. (see Ms.).
• Non-parallel usage, such as "man and wife".
• Stereotypical words such as virile and ladylike

Feminist advocates of gender-neutral language believe the following about language which they deem sexist:

• It marginalizes women and creates the impression of a male-dominated society.
• It can be patronising, for example treating women only as marriage material
• It can perpetuate stereotypes about the "correct" way for a man or woman to behave.

A deeper variant of these arguments involves the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the suggestion that our language shapes our thought processes and that in order to eliminate sexism we would do well to eliminate allegedly "sexist" forms from our language. Some people dismiss the effectiveness of such a suggestion, viewing "non-sexist language" as irrelevant window-dressing which merely hides sexist attitudes rather than changing them.

Most opponents of gender neutral language modification do not accept these arguments as valid.

• Most argue that traditional use of the English language, and other Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic languages, including using male pronouns when referencing both males and females, is not sexist. Many point out that the difference between, for example, "waiter" and "waitress" is purely for specificity, not quality differentiation. Most who take this point of view say that difference is not synonymous with judgement. Men and women are different, they say, and we shouldn't be afraid to admit that.
• Some argue that there is no reason to assume that the traditional linguistic gender hierarchies reflects a bias against women. They argue it could actually reflect women being more valued than men. The female grammatical gender, they say, has historically been a more "marked" subset of the more generic set that is the male grammatical gender. They point to examples such as "woman," which is "wo" added on to "man," "female," often misinterpreted as "fe" added on to "male" (actually from Latin femella, unrelated to male), and the use in many languages of the male gender as a generic gender. In many such linguistic cases, they argue, the subset is actually more valued. One example of this is Cadillacs and automobiles. If there were a parking lot full of Cadillacs, they would usually be called "Cadillacs," whereas if the lot were full of either Cadillacs and non-Cadillacs, or vehicles which were all non-Cadillacs, they would simply be called "automobiles." But this would in no way imply that the Cadillacs were less valued than any of the other cars, and could likely mean that they were more valued. [1]
• They feel that rewriting text to eliminate gender-specific pronouns results in an awkward and ugly writing style.
• Many regard it as "political correctness gone mad".

Enforcement, persuasion, or evolution?

Only a tiny minority of advocates for gender-neutral language argue that using allegedly "sexist" language should be illegal. But many advocates do support the enforcement of rules and policies against language they feel is sexist by schools and work places. Hate speech legislation does exist in some countries, but applies to much more clear-cut and widely accepted cases of perceived prejudice. Many editing houses, corporations, and government bodies have official policies in favour of in-house use of gender-neutral language. In some cases, laws exist regarding the use of gender-neutral language in certain situations, such as job advertisements.

The majority of advocates for gender-neutral language generally prefer persuasion rather than enforcement. One tool of this persuasion is creating guidelines (see below) that indicate how they believe language should be used. Another tool they use is simply to make use of 'non-sexist language' themselves, thereby leading by example.

Some opponents of "non-sexist language" modification accept the basic premise that traditional use of gender in English reflects sexism, but argue that a change in language should evolve organically from changing public attitudes towards gender issues, rather than be achieved either by enforcement, or by persuasion.

Neologising

Some terms, such as firefighter and singular they, are sometimes criticized by opponents of gender neutral language-modification as neologisms. But supporters argue that they have a long history that predates the beginning of the women's liberation movement by centuries. At other times new terms have indeed been created, such as Womyn. The issue is sometimes confused by satirists who invent extreme examples of the supposed consequences of "non-sexist language," such as herstory.

Some critics accuse advocates of gender-neutral language-modification of "re-gendering" language, replacing masculine in some cases by feminine terms that are equally sexist. Other critics argue that some phrases used in non-sexist language violate the rules of proper grammar and style.

Some critics claim that words like "he or she" are not real English words, for they only exist in print, not in speech. In print it is easy for an editor to employ rules of gender-neutral language, but speech is practically impossible to control. People simply don't use words like "he or she" in their everyday speech; instead they use "they" or "he". Only the most determined reformer would actually use "he or she" in a casual conversation, since it would sound stilted and affected to many people.

Many feminist linguists see words like he or she as a solution to a non-existent problem, arguing that most English speakers happily use the singular they without thinking twice. But many others still insist that it is a grammatical error. The feminist linguists argue that the case for the singular they is quite compelling based on the history of the English language. They argue that it has been in continuous use since the Middle Ages, and cite its use by some of the greatest English authors including Shakespeare and Chaucer. The editors of some style guides have been convinced by these arguments, and some guides now accept the singular they as grammatically correct.

Critics of the "singular they" argue that while it may sound OK in some contexts, in others it would clearly sound absurd. For example, they argue that no one would ever say anything like: "I'm going to babysit a two-year-old tomorrow. I hope they are well-behaved. I hope they can entertain themselves. I don't want any trouble with them." As a result, they argue, the "singular they" can never fully replace "he," "his," and "him" in cases where the gender is unknown.

However, to some readers the above only sounds strange because of its simple structure and makes perfect sense when rewritten as such: "I'm going to babysit a two-year-old tomorrow and I hope they're well-behaved. I hope they can entertain themself, because I don't want any trouble with them." Notice the use of themself. Themself is increasingly being used as a gender-neutral pronoun, serving as a singular form of themselves to take the place of 'himself' or 'herself'.

Guidelines

Many different authorities have presented guidelines on whether, and if so and where, to use gender-neutral, or "non-sexist" language. Several are listed below:

• The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association has an oft-cited section on "Guidelines to Reduce Bias in Language". ISBN 1557987912
• American Philosophical Association - published 1986
• Linguistic Society of America
• University of Western Sydney - last revised 1995
• University of New Hampshire
• The Guardian - see section gender issues
• Avoiding Heterosexual Bias in Language, published by the Committee on Lesbian and Gay Concern, American Psychological Association.

Many dictionaries, stylebooks, and some authoritative guides now counsel the writer to follow gender-neutral guidelines. These guidelines, though accepted by many, often remain controversial. Conflict often arises between the desire of some to modify the English language to avoid what they perceive as sexism, and the desire of others to either continue writing and speaking in a way that feels natural and comfortable to them, and/or to maintain traditional standards of grammatical correctness.

Standards advocated by supporters of the gender-neutral modification in English have been applied differently and to differing degrees among English speakers worldwide. This has reflecting differences in cultures and language structure, for example American English in contrast to British English. They are also impacted upon, depending on whether a person uses English as their first language or as a second language, regional variants or whether their form of English is based on grammatical structures inherited from a no longer widely used other language (for example, Hiberno-English) or owes its linguistic structure to earlier Old English or Elizabethan English. In these cases, language structure from their native tongue or linguistic inheritance may enter into their terminology.

Gender neutral language modification in other languages

The situation of gender neutral language modification is very different in languages that have masculine and feminine grammatical gender, such as French, German, and Spanish, simply because it is impossible to construct a gender-neutral sentence the way it can be done in English. For example, in French, the masculine gender supersedes the feminine; la femme et l'homme (the woman and the man) has 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, it should be noted that "gender-neutral" does not necessarily mean eliminating gender, but rather it is often used by its advocates to mean a use of gender which they feel is fair and balanced in its treatment of both genders. For example, they feel that it is insulting to use the male gender for a female professional, for example calling a woman le médecin (the (masculine) doctor). They feel this would imply that she changed sex or became somehow more mannish when she went to work. This sort of modification is often less controversial, 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 created by adding a suffix to the masculine form (such as the German Ingenieurin from Ingenieur, engineer). Some feminists hold that these words are not gender-neutral as they are secondary forms, derived from the primary masculine term. Others object to the perceived clumsiness of such neologisms. Citing German as an example, almost all terms referring to women end in -in, and because of the suffix none can consist of a single syllable as many masculine job titles (such as Arzt, doctor) do.

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-defined 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, correctly or incorrectly, as examples of cultural imperialism, or the exporting of Anglo-American 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.

What follows is an overview of a number of languages, their gender-neutrality, language modification campaigns, and conflicts:

Basque

Basque language is remarkably gender-free. Most nouns have no gender or there are different words for males and females (ama, "mother"; aita, "father"; aita-ama, "father and mother"; guraso, "parent"). Some words take suffixes according to gender (aktore, "actor"; aktoresa, "actress"), but they are rare, and both purists who avoid Romance influence and the Basque Institute of the Woman recommend against it. For animals, there are particles (oilo, "hen"; oilar, "cock"; hartz eme, "female bear"; hartz arra, "male bear") or different words (behi, "cow"; zezen, "bull").

While there are no gender pronouns, verbs can mark gender in the singular second person (this provides no information since the listener already knows their gender): hik duk, "you (male) have it"; hik dun, "you (female) have it". Non-sexism supporters propose substituting those forms by the more formal ones: zuk duzu "you have it". In earlier stages, the relation between hik and zuk was like that of you and thou in old English. Some Basque dialects already avoid hik as too disrespectful.

It should be noted that the use of a gender-free language has not made the historical Basque society a non-sexist one.

Chinese

The various forms of the Chinese language are remarkably gender-neutral due to its underlying structure, and possesses few linguistic markers of gender, even though Chinese society has historically been shown to have significant degree of male dominance in the social structure as well as education and written literature. Critics of gender-neutral language modification in other languages see this as evidence of a lack of cause-and-effect relationship between a society's gender relations and the use of grammatical gender in its language.

Comprehension in Chinese is almost wholly dependent on word order as Chinese has no inflection for gender, tense, or case. There is also very little derivational inflection, instead the language relies heavily on compounding to create new words. A Chinese word is thus inherently gender-neutral unless it contains a root for man or woman. For example, the word for doctor is yīshēng (醫生) and can only be made gender-specific by adding the root for male or female to the front of it. Thus to specify a male doctor, one would need to say nányīshēng (男醫生). Under normal circumstances both male and female doctors would simply be referred to as yīshēng.

Spoken Chinese also has only one third-person pronoun, tā for all situations (though -men 們 / 们 can be added as a plural suffix). Tā can mean he, she, or it in any case. However, the different meanings are written with different characters: "他", containing the human radical "亻", for he, or a person of undetermined gender; "她", containing the female radical "女", for she; and "它" for it. Despite this, there is no "he/she" issue in Chinese, because pronouns are usually implied from context, and replacing "她" with "他" causes no grammatical conflict. It should be noted that the character for "she", containing the 'woman' radical (glyphic element of a character's composition), was invented in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century; prior to this, the character indicating "he" today was used for both gender pronouns--it contains the 'person' radical, which, as noted above, is not gender-specific. Likewise there exists a written female form for you, 妳.

Esperanto

In Esperanto, as in Romance Languages, the generic form of nouns is the same as the male form and different from the female form. E.g., doktoro = "doctor (male or unspecified sex)", doktorino = "female doctor"; also doktoroj = "doctors (male or unspecified sex)", gedoktoroj or doktoroj = "doctors (mixed male/female)", doktorinoj = "female doctors". Some words, like patro ("father"), are intrinsically masculine, and there is no single word to express "a parent". Some feminists therefore accuse the language of being inherently sexist. (This use of -in- to form the feminine of nouns is reminiscent of German, e.g. Maler, Malerin = "painter".) Likewise for pronouns: as in English, li ("he") may be generic, whereas ŝi ("she") is always female.

Esperanto has a prefix ge- meaning "both sexes together", and so strictly only applies to plurals: e.g. gedoktoroj ("male and female doctors"). By extension, ge- has been employed to remove sex from an intrinsically-sexed singular word (e.g. gepatro, "a parent", instead of patro aŭ patrino, "father or mother"). This usage has not been generally accepted, but does appear in La Nova Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto (The New Complete Illustrated Dictionary of Esperanto) published in 2002.

Advocates of sex-neutral language modification are unhappy with this aspect of the language. They feel that it has the implication that masculinity is some kind of default, and femininity is an exception, which they take to mean that females are seen as less important than males. Critics of such language modification argue that exceptional treatment for the female could mean quite the opposite, that females are seen as more valuable— or have no inherent value judgment at all. [2]

Defenders of Esperanto also point out that this asymmetric treatment of male and female did not originate with the creation of their language, but rather reflects a general feature of most languages, including those European languages from which Esperanto was formed. In each Romance language, for instance, sex-based grammatical genders are assigned to all nouns— even to unsexed objects, or in opposition to the biological sex (as autorité = "authority" in French, guardia = "policeman" in Italian, and virilidad = "masculinity" in Spanish, which all have feminine gender). They argue further that the assignment of grammatical gender is something more arbitrary, and that Romance and German speakers generally do not make the sexist assumptions claimed by the critics, and that if they are sexist, this has nothing to do with the language they are speaking. Viewed in this broader context, argue the Esperantists, "sexist language" is shown to be a matter of cultural assumptions and interpretations by the speakers, not of the language per se.

Indeed, doktoro can refer to a female doctor, a custom that is compatible with the standard grammar. Thus doktorino may be used if one wishes to emphasize femaleness, but it is not necessary to do so; and some have even proposed the use of virdoktoro (literally "male-doctor") or neologistic suffixes like -iĉ- (doktoriĉo) when one wants to emphasize maleness. Seldom, though, are any of these forms used in names of profession, except as a title, such as Doctor or Judge. As for the pronouns ŝi and li, one can use the neutral tiu ("that person") instead. The alternative ŝ/li is occasionally used, but it has the same problems as "s/he" in English, though it is more easily pronounceable. Some users also use neologisms such as ri as an epicene pronoun.

Ido, 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. Instead, nouns in Ido for kinds of people are sex-neutral in their ordinary form, but may be made either female- or male-specific by use of a suffix. Examples: sekretario, secretary --- sekretariulo, man secretary --- sekretariino, woman secretary; doktoro, doctor --- doktorulo, man doctor --- doktorino, woman doctor. It also has a "pan-gender" 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.)

• A detailed clarification in Esperanto about the gender-specificity of Esperanto nouns
• Justin B. Rye on sexism in Esperanto
• "Riismo" in Esperanto
• Commentary on various proposals for avoiding sexism in Esperanto

Finnish

Finnish has only gender-neutral pronouns (it completely lacks grammatical gender). The word hän is completely gender-neutral and means both she and he. The suffix -tar or -tär can be added to some words (mostly professions) to "feminize" the word, for example näyttelijä (actor) - näyttelijätär (actress) if required, but these forms are not commonly used any more; using the basic word for both genders (näyttelijä for male and female actors) is the norm. There are also some professions or expressions in which the word mies (man) is an integral part (e.g. puhemies, meaning chairman; palomies, fireman, etc.). These are mostly retained in their traditional forms (unless a suitable gender-free word is easily available). As a special case the chairperson of Finnish Parliament is referred as puhemies irrespective of the actual gender of the person - either herra puhemies (Mr. Chairman) or rouva puhemies (Mrs. or Madame Chairman).

Despite having gender-neutral pronouns, Finnish joins most other Western languages in having strongly gender-biased adjectives. As an example, in the first few years after women were permitted to serve as volunteers in the Finnish armed forces, they were required to swear to defend the country in a manly way (miehuullisesti).

French

See also the French version of this article

In French, feminine job titles are created by adding -e (l'avocate), -eure (la docteure), -euse (la travailleuse), -esse (la mairesse), -ice (la directrice), or nothing in some cases such as -iste or -logue (la psychologue). More generally, "non-sexist" styles can include the use of brackets or capital letters to insert feminine endings (étudiant(e)s or étudiantEs) or repeat gendered words (toutes et tous, citoyennes et citoyens).

Words that formerly referred to a dignitary's wife (l'ambassadrice) can be used to refer to a woman in that position; this, like other "non-sexist" forms is much more common in Quebec or Belgium (as they are generally given by local languages guidelines or even laws), than in France. Although the marriage titles have mainly dropped out of use, many cite the possible confusion as a reason for continuing to use such as Madame le Président or Madame l'ambassadeur. For this reason, these remain the most frequent, at least in France. (On the other hand, an ambassador's husband would not be Monsieur l'ambassadrice., he is called le mari de l'ambassadeur -- the ambassador's husband.)

German

German has three third-person nominative singular pronouns: er (male), sie (female), and man (impersonal). Man is frequently used in general statements, e.g. Man kann hier nicht parken — "One cannot park here." This pronoun man is distinguished from the noun Mann (capitalized and with two n's), which means "male adult human". However, man cannot easily be used to refer to a specific person of indeterminate sex.

Gender-neutral language-modification advocates feel that the traditional phraseology of the language reflects a domination of the male over the female, as they feel it does in many other languages. They object to certain fixed phrases where the male form usually comes first, such as man and woman (Mann und Frau), and to the use of words like Fräulein, although it has dropped out of common use.

Grammatical gender is a primary topic of contention among gender-neutral language advocates. "Der Mensch" is a masculine word meaning "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, 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 adverts 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 to be a corruption of the language. It is 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 far left, as it is often used by left-leaning newspapers, notably Die Tageszeitung and the Swiss weekly WOZ - Die Wochenzeitung.

"We need an experienced computer scientist" could thus be expressed several ways, among them:

Stated twice:

Wir brauchen eine erfahrene Informatikerin oder einen erfahrenen Informatiker

Using slashes:

Wir brauchen eine/n erfahrene/n Informatiker/in

With the -In suffix:

Wir brauchen eine erfahrene InformatikerIn; sometimes Wir brauchen eineN erfahreneN InformatikerIn

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 (male or female) sought!)

Hebrew

In Hebrew, which has a high degree of grammatical gender, virtually every noun (as well as pronouns and most verbs of the second and third person) is grammatically either masculine or feminine. As a result of campaigns by advocates for employment equality or gender neutral language modification, laws have been passsed 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.

Hungarian

Hungarian does not have gender-specific pronouns and lacks grammatical gender: referring to a gender needs explicit statement of "the man" (he) or "the woman" (she). "ő" means "he/she" and "ők" means "they". Hungarian distinguishes persons and things, as you refer to things as "az" (it) or "azok" (those).

However there is a way to distinguish between male and female persons having a certain profession by adding "nő"-"woman" to the end of the word (színész-szinésznő (actor-actress, lit. "actorwoman" or rendőr-rendőrnő, lit. policeman-policewoman). This though does not work with all the professions as quite many would sound very awkward (as "postás" meaning "letter carrier", lit. "someone associated with the post", where there is no such thing as "postásnő" "mailwoman"). This usage has been criticized by Hungarian feminists, as it implies that the normal word or profession is masculine in nature and must only be qualified if a woman is performing it.

Italian

In Italian feminine job titles are easily formed (-a, -essa and other suffixes) but often they are perceived as ridiculous neologisms. Italian job announcements often use a specific expected gender ("segretaria", "meccanico") or they address both sexes 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 vestiges of neuter; adjectives are declined, even if many remain the same, and adjective declination is also used in the many verbal tenses involving the past participle. The masculine gender is the default for isolated adjectives and pronouns, for mixed-gender aggregates and for generic usage.

Japanese

Japanese has no grammatical gender and number. Thus, isha (医者) can mean one or many male doctors, one or many female doctors, or many male and female doctors. Another example of the lack of European-style gender in language is the using of compound characters. The 'sha' in geisha (芸者, 'art person') and 'ja' in 'ninja' (忍者, 'sneaking person') are the same character. Pronouns are generally avoided unless the meaning is unclear.

The word "kare", grammatically a noun, is conventionally used in English teaching materials to translate the English word "he"; however, unlike English "he", it is seldom used in actual Japanese conversation, it is more of a literary word. The same happens with "kanojo", literary for "she". "Kanojo" is used in conversation, but mainly in the sense of "girlfriend", not "she".

The plural of "kare", "karera" (彼ら) may also refer to groups of females, and is preferable to the rather demeaning (彼女達, "those women" or "girlfriendfolk"). Gender neutral language modification advocates suggest avoiding "karera" by instead using "those people" (あの人達, ano hito-tachi), which they praise as gender neutral, grammatical and natural-sounding. It should be noted though that until the Meiji Restoration in the 19th century, kare (彼) was used for both genders, kanojo (彼女) being, and still is, 'girlfriend'.

In general, Japanese, unlike European languages, has no grammatical gender, although certain words and expressions semantically refer specifically to males or specifically to females (such as haha "mother", bijin "beautiful woman", kakkou ga ii "is handsome"). However, the language spoken by Japanese women is markedly different from the speech of Japanese men in terms of vocabulary, use of grammar and idiom, pronunciation etc.

An increasing number of Japanese avoid the traditional common terms for [your] wife (奥さん)and [your] husband　(ご主人) which literally mean "the person inside" and "the master". Japanese custom has also dictated that women are expected to use a polite form of language keigo in more situations than men. This expectation has diminished more among urban young Japanese in the past decade.

The major issues with regarded to gendered language in Japanese are overall speech patterns. There exists a "woman's language" ('onna kotoba') and "man's language" ('otoko kotoba'). Women's speech has different sentence endings than that of men, especially in non-polite speech. (Polite speech tends to be less differentiated, with male speech becoming more similar to female). A good example is the gender-neutral use of 'watashi' or 'watakushi' for 'I' in polite speech. In informal speech, women are still more likely to use 'watashi' or 'atashi', while men use 'boku', 'ore' or 'washi'. Women's speech is characterized by sentences ending with 'wa' (rising intonation) and by dropping the verbs 'da' or 'desu' (meaning "is"). Male speech never drops the word 'da' in a sentence. The differences are quite intricate, but very persistent, and there is little or no movement in Japan to change male/female speech patterns, since changes can sound silly or awkward (eg. a male using female speech would simply be regarded as gay). However some historians note that over time Japanese as a whole has become more feminine. Words like money, 'kane', were never used by men casually with the honorific prefix 'o' before recent times. Today 'okane' is standard Japanese and is used by men in non-polite situations, something unthinkable 100 years ago.

Korean

Korean, like a few other East Asian languages such as Japanese, does not use pronouns in everyday language, because the meaning is clear in the context. In case of confusion, there are pronouns to clarify the position, but normally the actual subject (person) is used rather than the pronoun. As for job titles, these are not gender-specific. Again, the meaning is normally clear in the context.

Russian

Though Russian intrinsically shares many of the same non-gender-neutral characteristics with other European languages — for instance, usage of masculine words for some occupations — this has not been viewed as a problem by Russian feminists, even in the recent years. Almost all Russian women do not object to what some would perceive as gender-specific language. Constructs like "he or she", though grammatically correct, are unheard of.

Most Russian nouns are grammatically either masculine or feminine (neuter nouns are relatively rare). Words used to refer to people are typically masculine, unless they refer specifically to women. Certain words are understood to refer to either men or women (e.g. человек / human, as opposed to мужчина / man and женщина / woman), are in fact traditionally used in cases wheren "gender-specific" terms would be used in English (e.g. "права человека" / lit. "the rights of a human" vs. traditional English "the rights of man"). Such terms, however, are usually grammatically masculine. There is a small number of grammatically neuter or feminine terms roughly meaning "person" that can be used to refer to either men or women: лицо (neuter, lit. "face"), персона (feminine), личность (fem). All such terms have a bureacratic connotation and are rarely used colloquially. Note also that as a general rule Russian does not use neuter terms for people (just like English does not use "it" as gender-neutral pronoun).

While many occupations have a masculine and feminine versions, the feminine version often has a negative connotation, which can range from strongly derogatory (female врачиха vs. male врач doctor), to mildly negative (female секретарша vs. male секретарь secretary), to barely perceptible (female юристка vs. male юрист lawyer). For this reason, it is not uncommon to use some of the masculine occupation terms when referring to women, and such practice is in fact seen as more politically correct. In case of such use, actual gender of the person can still be indicated through the verb: e.g., 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. It should be noted, however, that a small number of grammatically feminine terms with positive connotations are routinely used to refer to both men and women, e.g. знаменитость (a famous person).

Russian adjectives and pronouns are always marked with grammatical gender and verbs are marked in gender in the past tense. When a masculine term is used to refer to a woman, feminine forms of verb is usually used, 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 if it is known ("врач сказала, что она..." = "the doctor(m) said(f) that she(f)..."), but typically agrees in gender with the term when an abstract person is discussed. (A feminine pronoun could still be used if the abstract person is assumed to be a woman: "Сходим к педиатру, посмотрим что она скажет." - "We'll go to a pediatrician(m) and we'll see what she(f) says.")

Serbian

Like the most other Slavic languages, 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 which end with 'o' and 'e' are neuter (although there are some exceptions). Adjectives and verb aspects (but not in all tenses) determine 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 говорник - govornik means speaker as in a man speaking, while feminine word говорница govornica means speaker as in woman speaking, but also means podium, or a speaker's platform; the masculine тренер - trener means male coach, while the feminine word тренерка - trenerka means female coach, but also means 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 male grammatical gender. For example, they favor using учитељица - učiteljica for female teacher (учитељ - učitelj is male teacher) and професорка - professor for female professor (професор - professor is male professor). They feel that the current convention to do otherwise stems from a patriarchal culture which dominated Serbia from the Middle ages up to the first part of 20th century. Some of the language which they consider sexist includes: министар - ministar for (male) minister and министарка - ministarka for the wife of minister, and професорка - profesorka for the wife of professor instead of a female professor, etc.

But many more traditional linguists, including women, argue that female names for occupations are not natural for the Serbian language. They feel that the male-gender form 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 spoken of as "човек" - čovek("human", in the masculine gender), "особа" - osoba ("person", in the feminine gender) or "људско биће" - ljudsko biće ("human being", in the neuter gender).

Only plural forms have clear general meaning: "професори" - profesori means both -- male professors as well as female and male professors, but "професорке" profesorke means only female professors. However, many feminists like to say "професори и професорке" - profesori i profesorke (male professors and female professors or vice versa) and to write "професори/ке" - profesori/ke.

Spanish

In Spanish, it is usually quite easy to change an -o to an -a, or to add an -a to an ending such as -or (el doctor, la doctora). Other endings can be left alone or changed (la estudiante but la alcaldesa). -ista is left alone. (One problem is el policía, "police officer", since la policía means "the police force". The only useful feminine term is la mujer policía). Traditionally, a presidenta was the president's wife, but in modern usage it means mainly a female president. As with 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 method, 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 political writing (¡Ciudadan@s!), but use of the slash (/) as in (el/la candidato/a) 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).

As in French, some politicians seek to avoid perceived sexism in their speeches, so they may repeat the gendered words ("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 *especialistos and *felizas in "los y las especialistos y especialistas felices y felizas").

On the other hand, there are cases in which the generic form is feminine, for instance, la persona (the person), las personas (the persons), la población (the population) and la víctima (the victim).

Spanish nouns and adjectives have grammatical gender and the endings do not always have something to do with the sex of the person.

Words ending in -o may refer to either a man or a woman: testigo.

Words ending in -a may refer to either a man or a woman as well: they can have the epicene ending -ista such as dentista, ciclista, turista, especialista.

Some words ending in -a refer only to men: cura (that is, priest, a word which always ends in -a for a profession so far held only by men).

Most nouns have an ending for the feminine and another for the masculine: cirujano, cirujana; escribano, escribana; maestro, maestra.

There are gender-neutral words in Spanish. They often come from the Latin agent participle -ens: representante, comerciante, estudiante. However clienta is a female cliente; likewise a jefa is a female jefe.

Activists against perceived sexism in language are also concerned about words where the feminine form has a different (usually less prestigious) meaning:

An offensive example is hombre público ("public man", a politician) and mujer pública ("public woman", a whore).

Presidenta used to be "the president's wife", but there have been several women presidents in Latin American republics. Some feel that the word presidente has a common gender ending (-e), but others have extended the meaning of the feminine form.

Modisto ("male fashion designer") was created as a counterpart to modista ("fashion designer" or "clothes maker").

A more 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.

Another is 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.

Swedish

Like other Germanic languages, Swedish used to have three genders. Today, it only has two: the neutrum (which uses the pronoun "det" ) and the merged masculine and feminine, a.k.a. the utrum (which uses the pronoun "den"). A few fossilized uses of the original genders still linger - for instance, the clock as an object is an utrum word but when used to ask or respond to what time it is, clock is a feminine word ("vad är klockan?" "hon är sex" = "what time is it?" "it's six o'clock").

Customarily female 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 ("The early Man and her tools"). The anglicisation of Swedish in the late 20th century has made to the usage of male pronouns to refer to inspecific genders more habitual, but it is still not the common rule.

Swedish adjectives are always inflected according to the number of their noun and used to be inflected by gender as well. Gender inflection of adjectives ("den sure chefen" (m) -> "den sura mamman" (f)) has not yet fallen completely out of the language - 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's more distinct before nouns that begin with a vowel than due to any wide sense of gender equality.

Until the 70's, it was rare that women generally had other professions than secretary, teacher or nurse. A "majorska" was the wife of a major, a "professorska" or "professorinna" the wife of a professor and so on. 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 still often is 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 euphemisms. 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 at 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. Swedish women also generally have lower salaries than men for the same kind of work, because they are all expected to stay at home with children at some point and, while well represented in government, are scarce in higher company positions.

Tagalog

Tagalog, like other Philippine languages, is gender neutral; pronouns do not even have specific genders.

However, Tagalog has had over three centuries of Spanish influence. So, gender is usually differentiated in certain Spanish loanwords by way of -o (masculine) and -a (feminine). These words mostly refer to ethnicities, occupations, and family. Some examples are: Pilipino/Pilipina (Filipino/a), Pinoy/Pinay (nickname for a Filipino person) Amerikano/Amerikana (American), tindero/tindera (vendor), inhinyero/inhinyera (engineer), tito/tita (uncle/aunt), manong/manang (elder brother/sister), and lolo/lola (grandfather/grandmother).

An exception to this would be presidente (president) which, unlike in Spanish, refers to either a male or a female.

Tamil

Tamil has a gender-neutral form for the third-person plural, which is also used for the third-person singular in all formal communication. Most job titles are derived from this form as they are mostly used in a formal context. They are thus gender-free.

Turkish

Turkish is a gender neutral language, as most other Turkic languages. Nouns are in generic form and for both males and females and this generic form is used. For example: Doktor (doctor), eczacı (pharmacist), mühendis (engineer) etc.

The Turkish equivalent for he, she and it is O. For example:

• O, gece yürümeyi çok seviyor. (He/she/it likes walking at night)
• Onu çok seviyorum. (I love him/her/it so much)

There are a few exceptions, where it is mandatory to provide gender (because of the nature of the foreign word origins):

• İş + Adam + ı = İşadamı (Business + Man = Businessman)
• İş + Kadın + ı = İşkadını (Business + Woman = Businesswoman)

There are very minor exceptions, which are constructed from native Turkish words after 1900s:

• Bilim + Adam + ı = Bilimadamı (Science + Man = Scientist)
• Bilim + Kadın + ı = Bilimkadını (Science + Woman = Scientist)

See also

• Gender role
• Gender-neutral pronoun
• Grammatical gender

References

External links

• Ansary, H., & Babaii, E. (2003). Subliminal sexism in current ESL EFL textbooks. The Asian EFL Journal Vol 5(1) http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/march03.sub1.php
• Female Grammar: Men's speech and women's speech
• Against the Theory of Sexist Language
• Excerpt from The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
• Regender can translate English webpages so as to swap genders. Reading such gender-swapped pages can be an interesting exercise in detecting gender-biased language.

de:Feministische Linguistik eo:Riismo fr:Langage sexiste he:שפה נטולת מגדר sv:Könsneutralt språk