Gender neutrality in genderless languages
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A
genderless language A genderless language is a natural or constructed language that has no distinctions of grammatical gender—that is, no categories requiring morphological agreement for gender between nouns and associated pronouns, adjectives, articles, or ve ...
is a
natural Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans ar ...
or constructed
language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...
that has no distinctions of
grammatical gender In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all noun ...
—that is, no categories requiring morphological
agreement Agreement may refer to: Agreements between people and organizations * Gentlemen's agreement, not enforceable by law * Trade agreement, between countries * Consensus, a decision-making process * Contract, enforceable in a court of law ** Meeting ...
between nouns and associated pronouns, adjectives, articles, or verbs. The notion of a genderless language is distinct from that of gender neutrality or
gender-neutral language Gender-neutral language or gender-inclusive language is language that avoids bias towards a particular sex or gender. In English, this includes use of nouns that are not gender-specific to refer to roles or professions, formation of phrases in a c ...
, which is wording that does not presuppose a particular
natural gender In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns ...
. A discourse in a grammatically genderless language is not necessarily gender-neutral, although genderless languages exclude many possibilities for reinforcement of
gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...
-related stereotypes, as they still include words with gender-specific meanings (such as "son" and "daughter"), and may include gender distinctions among pronouns (such as "he" and "she").


Austronesian languages


Tagalog

Tagalog, like most Austronesian languages, is gender-neutral. The third-person pronoun ''siya'' is used for both "he" and "she", as well as "it" in the context of being a neuter gender. Native nouns also feature this characteristic, normally with the addition of ''lalaki'' ("male") or ''babae'' ("female") to the noun to signify gender in terms such as ''anak na lalaki'' ("son") or ''babaeng kambing'' ("she-goat"). However, because Tagalog has had over three centuries of
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
influence, gender is usually differentiated in certain Spanish loanwords by way of the
suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...
es ''-a'' (feminine)'' ''and'' -o'' (masculine). These words mostly refer to ethnicities, occupations, and family. Some examples are: ''Pilipina''/''Pilipino'' (Filipina/o) and their derivative nicknames ''Pinay''/''Pinoy'', ''tindera''/''tindero'' (vendor), ''inhinyera''/''inhinyero'' (engineer), ''tita''/''tito'' (aunt/uncle), ''manang''/''manong'' (elder sister/brother), and ''lola''/''lolo'' (grandmother/grandfather). A few gender-differentiating pairs originate from Chinese, mostly relating to kinship terminology such as ''ate'' (big sister) and ''kuya'' (big brother). The
gender neutral Gender neutrality (adjective form: gender-neutral), also known as gender-neutralism or the gender neutrality movement, is the idea that policies, language, and other social institutions (social structures or gender roles) should avoid distinguish ...
term 'Filipinx' has gained popularity especially on Filipino-Americans as a
demonym A demonym (; ) or gentilic () is a word that identifies a group of people (inhabitants, residents, natives) in relation to a particular place. Demonyms are usually derived from the name of the place (hamlet, village, town, city, region, province, ...
or an
adjective In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Tra ...
. Since then it has been controversial, with Filipinos living in the Philippines arguing that the term 'Filipino' is already genderless. While the word is borrowed from Spanish where suffixes indicate gender, the term borrowed into Tagalog is already used in a gender-neutral manner. The coined term is said to be unnecessary and that it imposes
eurocentric Eurocentrism (also Eurocentricity or Western-centrism) is a worldview that is centered on Western civilization or a biased view that favors it over non-Western civilizations. The exact scope of Eurocentrism varies from the entire Western world ...
standards in the language.


Indo-European languages


Armenian

In
Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...
, neither pronouns nor nouns have grammatical gender. The third person pronoun նա(na) means both he and she, and նրանք (nranq) is for they.


English

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
lacks grammatical gender, but can be considered to have a ''pronominal gender system'' with semantic gender represented in the
pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not co ...
s. This system of gender is quite minimal compared to languages with grammatical gender. Historically, "he" referred to a generic person whose gender is unspecified in formal language, but the gender-neutral
singular they Singular ''they'', along with its inflected or derivative forms, ''them'', ''their'', ''theirs'' and ''themselves'' (or ''themself''), is a gender-neutral third-person pronoun. It typically occurs with an unspecified antecedent, in sentence ...
has long been common in informal language, and is becoming increasingly so in formal language. The use of the neuter pronoun 'it' is most commonly used in reference to non-personified objects and animals rather than for people.


Other natural languages


Basque

The Basque language is largely gender-free. Most nouns have no gender, though there are different words for females and males in some cases (, "mother"; , "father"; , "parent"). Some words are differentiated according to gender, like in the
English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...
(, "actress"; , "act+or"), but they are not the main rule. For animals, there are particles (, "hen"; , "cock"; , "female bear"; , "male bear") or different words (, "cow"; , "bull"). While there are no gender-specific pronouns, in some dialects,
Basque verbs The verb is one of the most complex parts of Basque grammar. It is sometimes represented as a difficult challenge for learners of the language, and many Basque grammars devote most of their pages to lists or tables of verb paradigms. This article d ...
can agree allocutively with the gender in the intimate singular second person (This is a mark of solidarity, providing no information since the listeners already know their genders.): , "you (female) have it"; , "you (male) have it". The verb is marked for addressee's gender, if they are intimate singular, whether or not they are referred to in the clause. In earlier stages, the relation between and was like that of ''you'' and ''thou'' in early modern English. Most Basque speakers already avoid as too disrespectful, and its use has been diminishing. In practice, the forms are more frequent when addressing males than females. A perception developed that associates to spontaneity, peasantness, directness, values linked to Basque rural males, while the formal forms are used by women. It has been explained as a consequence of the
rural exodus Rural flight (or rural exodus) is the migratory pattern of peoples from rural areas into urban areas. It is urbanization seen from the rural perspective. In industrializing economies like Britain in the eighteenth century or East Asia in the ...
of Basque peasants. Men would become workers in a factory with other men from their town. Females would become maids, waitresses, shop clerks where informal Basque would be felt improper. When institutions have tried to nuance closeness in their public communications, the male forms have been chosen. Non-sexism supporters propose substituting those forms by the more formal ones: "you have it". Recently, some Basque feminists have tried to revive the use of forms among women.


Turkish

Turkish Turkish may refer to: *a Turkic language spoken by the Turks * of or about Turkey ** Turkish language *** Turkish alphabet ** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation *** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey *** Turkish communities and mi ...
is a gender-neutral language, like most other
Turkic languages The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turkic languag ...
. Nouns have a generic form and this generic form is used for both males and females. For example, ''doktor'' (doctor), ''eczacı'' (pharmacist), ''mühendis'' (engineer) etc. Very few words for person reference contain a clue to the gender of the referred person, such as ''anne/baba'' "mother/father", ''kız/oğlan'' "girl/boy", ''hanım/bey'' "lady/sir". The third person singular pronoun "o" refers to "he", "she" and "it". At the same time research has shown a significant presence of semantically-implied gender ( covert gender) in Turkish. In addition to the absence of semantic
gender neutral Gender neutrality (adjective form: gender-neutral), also known as gender-neutralism or the gender neutrality movement, is the idea that policies, language, and other social institutions (social structures or gender roles) should avoid distinguish ...
ity it was also noted that the usage of gender markings in Turkish is asymmetrical. In translations of sentences from English texts where the gender is evident (e.g., usage of he/she or male vs. female context) it was noticed that feminine gender was marked in 50% of cases, while masculine was marked only in 5% of cases. While translations are not typically representative of linguistic data, similar asymmetry was also observed in Turkish literary and newspaper texts.


Swahili

Swahili is a
Bantu language The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu people of Central, Southern, Eastern africa and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages. The t ...
spoken in many parts of
Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
such as
Kenya ) , national_anthem = "Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"() , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Nairobi , coordinates = , largest_city = Nairobi , ...
and
Tanzania Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands and ...
. It is largely gender neutral in specific nouns. Words such as actor/actress (mwigaji wa hadithi) and waiter/waitress (mtumishi mezani) are gender neutral among most others in the language. The words he, him, she, her translate to a single word in Swahili, yeye. There are gender specific words for man/woman (mwanamume/mwanamke) and mother/father (mama/baba), so it is not completely gender neutral, although a vast majority of the words do not distinguish between male or female. The language does not have a grammatical gender either.


Varieties of Chinese

Sinitic languages (or topolects) are largely gender-neutral. Chinese has no inflections for gender, tense, or case, so comprehension is almost wholly dependent on
word order In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...
. There are also very few, if any, derivational inflections; instead, the language relies heavily on
compounding In the field of pharmacy, compounding (performed in compounding pharmacies) is preparation of a custom formulation of a medication to fit a unique need of a patient that cannot be met with commercially available products. This may be done for me ...
to create new words. A Chinese word is thus inherently gender-neutral, and any given word can be preceded by an morpheme indicating masculinity or femininity. For example, the word for "doctor" is ''yīshēng'' (
Traditional A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or ...
: 醫生, Simplified: 医生). To specify the gender of the doctor, the speaker can add the morpheme for "male" or "female" to the front of it. Thus, to specify a male doctor, one would prefix ''nán'' 男 (male), as in ''nányīshēng'' (男醫生/男医生); to specify a female doctor, one would prefix ''nǚ'' 女 (female), as in ''nǚyīshēng'' (女醫生/女医生). Under normal circumstances, both male and female doctors would simply be referred to as ''yīshēng'' (醫生/医生).


Mandarin

Spoken Mandarin Chinese also has only one third-person singular pronoun, ''tā'' for all referents. ''Tā'' can mean "he" (also " He" for deities, written differently), "she", or "it". However, the different meanings of ''tā'' are written with different
characters Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...
: "他", containing the human
radical Radical may refer to: Politics and ideology Politics *Radical politics, the political intent of fundamental societal change *Radicalism (historical), the Radical Movement that began in late 18th century Britain and spread to continental Europe and ...
"亻", from "人", meaning person, for ''he'' or a person of undetermined gender; "她", containing the feminine radical "女", for "she"; and "它" for "it"; "祂" containing the spirit radical "礻", from "示", for deities; "牠" containing the cow radical "牜", from "牛", for animals. The character for "she", containing the "woman" radical (glyphic element of a character's composition), was invented in the early twentieth century due to western influence; prior to this, the character indicating "he" today was used for both genders: it contains the "person" radical, which, as noted above, is not gender-specific.


Cantonese

In
written Cantonese Written Cantonese is the most complete written form of Chinese after that for Mandarin Chinese and Classical Chinese. Written Chinese was originally developed for Classical Chinese, and was the main literary language of China until the 19th cent ...
, the third-person singular pronoun is ''keui5'', written as ; it may refer to people of either gender because Cantonese does not have gendered third-person pronouns as in English. The practice of replacing the "亻" radical with "女" (forming the character ) to specifically indicate the female gender may also be seen occasionally in informal writing; however, this is neither widely accepted nor grammatically or semantically required, and the character 姖 has a separate meaning in
standard Chinese Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern Standar ...
.


See also

*
Gender marking in job titles A gender-specific job title is a name of a job that also specifies or implies the gender of the person performing that job. For example, in English, the job title ''stewardess'' implies that the person is female. A gender-neutral job title, on the ...
*
Gender neutrality in languages with grammatical gender Gender neutrality in languages with grammatical gender is the usage of wording that is balanced in its treatment of the genders in a non-grammatical sense. For example, advocates of gender-neutral language challenge the traditional use of masc ...
* IGALA (International Gender and Language Association)


Bibliography

*


References


External links


On the Creation of "She"
{{lexical categories, state=collapsed Gender-neutral language