Gender neutral language in French

Gender neutral language

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The French language has two grammatical genders: feminine and masculine. Activists have started seeking solutions to degender the language as much as possible and, therefore, make it more inclusive. These solutions entail neologisms as well as non-neologisms.

Non-neologisms

Refeminization

Prior to the 17th century, French, like Italian, Spanish, and other Romance languages, utilized feminine inflections to distinguish female and male professionals. However, for a range of reasons (both societal — such as misogyny — and linguistic, as French was being standardized and dialect speakers were expected to learn standard French) grammarians ensured that these feminine designations were effectively removed from the language.

Today, many people refer to the contemporary introduction of feminine designations as féminisation ('feminization'), believing that these occupational titles are newly coined terms. However, this is not the case, as they are being revived from an earlier iteration of the French language, making reféminisation ('refeminization') a more accurate term.

Refeminization contributes to degendering French, as studies in various languages have demonstrated that generic masculine, despite being considered gender-neutral by French prescriptive grammar ("Selon Le Bon Usage de Maurice Grevisse, l'adjectif se met donc au 'genre indifférencié, c'est-à-dire au masculin'."), is not actually cognitively neutral. By incorporating the feminine form of a word, speakers acknowledge the presence of individuals of more genders than just one, and the interchangeability of the masculine versus feminine terms as a result of the growing similarity in their distributions contribute to decoupling biological sex, social gender/gender position or gender identity (cf. sex assignment) from the specific contexts they tend to be associated with.

Masculine	Feminine by the Académie	Refeminized
un auteur	une auteur(e)	une autrice
un professeur	une professeur(e)	une professeuse
un peintre	une peintre	une peintresse
un chirurgien	une femme chirurgien	une chirurgienne

Doublets

For example, « Nous prions les étudiantes et (les) étudiants de remettre leur copie à la personne responsable ». Some people don't enjoy the repetition, others consider that the doublets don't encompass all genders, others again are unsure which form to mention first, since the order conveys information about the value the speaker gives to each item.

Shortened doublets

The feminine suffix gets attached to the masculine suffix, rather than the whole word being repeated (as in classical doublets).

Middle dot	Dot	Parentheses	Slash	Dash
professionnel·les professionnel·le·s	acteur.rice	employé(e)	chanteur/euse	boulanger-ère

Morphologically invariant gender-specific nouns

It should be noted that, because French systematically derives its agent nouns through the addition of gender-marked suffixes, it lacks the true common-gender nouns, i. e. Utrum (cf. also dual-gender nouns), found in English.

Some examples of morphologically — but not syntactically — invariant gender-specific nouns in French

Morphologically invariant gender-specific nouns

indefinite article	definite article	Example of usage	Commentary
un·e élève	l'élève	« Les élèves apprennent leur leçon. »	élève, starting with a vowel, stays morphologically epicene when combined with the singular definite article (la and le becoming shortened to l' if followed by a vowel)
un·e enfant	l'enfant	« L'enfant regarde la télévision. »	id.
un·e artiste	l'artiste	« Les artistes perdent leur travail. »	Notice the epicene agentive suffix -iste.
un·e juge	le/la juge	« Les juges ont pris leur décision. »	juge, starting with a consonent, can only stay morphologically epicene in combination with the plural — all epicene, by the way —articles.
un·e destinataire	le/la destinataire	« Les destinataires ne recevront pas leur colis à temps. »	Notice the epicene agentive suffix -aire.

As singular articles indicate gender ('la' and 'le'), this technique works best with plural forms. However, it also works with singular forms if the noun begins with a vowel, because the article automatically becomes l', which does not express gender. A drawback is that there are not morphologically invariant occupational titles for all professions or functions in regards to natural gender, i. e. Sexus, "a linguistic category for the sex of real life beings, both the biological sex of animals or the social identity of a person."

In certain Swiss-French varieties, as in the canton of Vaud, masculine and feminine words ending in <é> resp. <ée> are pronounced differently (e. g., une employée [ynɑ̃plwaje:]/[ynɑ̃plwaje:j] vs. un employé [ɛ̃nɑ̃plwaje]/[œ̃nɑ̃plwaje]). However, this linguistically conservative pronunciation is becoming increasingly marginal: it is primarily confined to Switzerland and, in major cities and among younger generations, the pronunciation is gradually converging with the standard French norm, meaning that the distinction between /e/ and /e:/ (or /e:j/, remnant from Franco-Provençal dialects spoken in the region before linguistic homogenization) is being neutralized, resulting in a single phoneme /e/ and causing employé and employée to be pronounced identically. As a result, here, these words are considered orally indistinguishable.

Fixed-gender epicenes and collective nouns

While human collective nouns — such as l'auditoire ('the audience') or le public ('the public')— inherently carry the semantic feature [+human], their relationship to natural gender/Sexus diverges from that of individual personal nouns. Unlike fixed-gender epicenes (e.g., la sentinelle, 'the sentry'), where a specific individual referent does indeed posses a gender/Sexus that the noun's morphology simply ignores (rendering the form Sexus-independent), collective nouns denote a macro-entity. In formal semantics, a multitude functioning as a single constituent does not inherently possess a natural gender. Thus, in collective nouns, the semantic feature of Sexus is not merely omitted, but is rather structurally completely absent (∅). In this respect, human collective nouns operate similarly to inanimate objects (e.g., la chaise, 'the chair'): they are assigned a grammatical gender/Genus, but the semantic category of natural gender/Sexus is inherently inapplicable to them.

To classify the grammatical strategies for making French more gender-inclusive or gender-neutral, we need to distinguish between:

1. Sexus-applicable nouns referring to animates
   1. Gender-specific nouns
      1. morphologically gendered nouns, where the noun gets its Sexus-specification through derivation from gender-marked agentive affixes (compare acteur vs. actrice).
      2. lexically gendered nouns, where the Sexus-specification is inherent to the lexeme (compare sœur, 'sister', or: mec, 'dude')
   2. Fixed-gender epicene nouns, where the natural gender/Sexus of the agent noun gets "overwritten" by grammatical gender/Genus (cf.
2. Sexus-inapplicable nouns referring to animates
   1. Collective nouns

This distinction is tripartite, comprising Sexus-dependent, Sexus-independent, and Sexus-inapplicable nouns, which underpins the morphological oppositions presented in the two following tables.

Individual versus collective nouns

Gender-specific nouns (Sexus) morphologically gendered nouns	Collective nouns (Genus)
Les auditrices et auditeurs sont attentifs.	L'auditoire est attentif.
Les spectateurs et spectatrices sont très calmes aujourd'hui.	Le public est très calme aujourd'hui.

Monogender nouns

Gender-specific nouns (Sexus) lexically gendered nouns	Fixed-gender epicenes (Genus) Sexus-independent
Je ne connais pas cet homme.	Je ne connais pas cette personne.
La mère de Jo ne parle pas le néerlandais.	Le parent de Jo ne parle pas le néerlandais.

Proximity agreement

Up until the 18th century, the masculine gender did not always take precedence over the feminine in instances where the genders could theoretically be congruent: proximity and free-choice agreement coexisted alongside the masculine-over-feminine rule. For a significant portion of Old French history, proximity agreement was the most prevalent method for agreeing adjectives, past participles, etc. (cf. Anglade 1931:172). Today, this agreement could facilitate gender equality in grammar instead of the masculine-over-feminine hierarchy that was suggested in the 17th and 18th century by French grammarians such as Malherbe, Vaugelas, Bouhours and Beauzée:

« Le genre masculin, étant le plus noble, doit prédominer toutes les fois que le masculin et le féminin se trouvent ensemble. » (Claude Favre de Vaugelas, Remarques sur la langue française, 1647).

« Lorsque les deux genres se rencontrent, il faut que le plus noble l’emporte. » (Bouhours 1675).

« Le genre masculin est réputé plus noble que le féminin à cause de la supériorité du mâle sur la femelle. » (Beauzée 1767).

Masculine-prevails-over-feminine rule	Proximity agreement
Ces œillets et ces roses sont beaux.	Ces œillets et ces roses sont belles.
Les nombreux filles et garçons.	Les nombreuses filles et garçons.

Neologisms

Methodological Note

In the accompanying tables, the most widely adopted neologisms are italicized. Unless explicitly noted and justified within the text, all neologisms and morphological rules discussed in this article are attested across French-speaking online communities and digital platforms. A comprehensive inventory of these primary sources is provided in the "Main Resources" section at the end of this article.

Personal pronouns

Regarding its pronouns, French only distinguishes gender in the third-person (e.g.: 'elle', 'la', 'eux', etc.).

Subject pronouns

Up until the 12th century, French knew the neutral subject pronoun 'el'/'al'. Today, 'el' cannot be reintroduced from Old French as it would sound identical to 'elle', the current feminin subject pronoun. As for 'al', it sounds like 'elle' in spoken Canadian French. It could, however, still be a viable option for the rest of the Francophone community. Nowadays, according to the Guide de rédaction inclusive (2021:14) from the Laval University, the Guide de grammaire neutre et inclusive (2021:5) from Divergenres, the Petit dico de français neutre/inclusif (2018) from La vie en Queer, and Wiki Trans (2019), the most widely adopted subject (neo)pronoun is 'iel(le)'. It was added to the prestigious dictionary Le Robert in 2021. Alongside 'iel(le)', Canadian French also seems to use 'ille'. In metropolitan France, the pronoun 'al', proposed by linguist Alpheratz in their book Grammaire du français inclusif (2018), has gained some recognition. The table below presents the primary gender-neutral subject pronouns found in the French-speaking world.

	gender-neutral subject pronouns
Dominant usage	iel(le) [jɛl]	ille [ij]	al
Peripheral usage	ol	ul	ael

Object pronouns: clitics and tonic pronouns

French distinguishes between clitic and tonic object pronouns. A clitic is a word that attaches in a syntactically rigid way to another word to form a prosodic unit with it, lacking prosodic as well as distributional autonomy. Currently, there is no prevailing gender-neutral clitic direct object personal pronoun; the most common ones are detailed below.

Clitic pronouns

Subject	Direct object	Indirect object
il	le, (l')	lui
elle	la, (l')	lui
iel	lae [lae] lea [ləa] lo lan li lu lia l' (standard French clitic used when the direct object precedes words that start with a vowel)	lui
ils	les	leur
elles	les	leur
iels	les	leur

Tonic pronouns are also called 'autonomous' because, in opposition to clitics, they form their own prosodic unit and can stand alone in the sentence, hence their distribution is not as fixed as the clitics' one. There are currently two competing systems: one consists in syncretizing (cf. analogical levelling) clitic and tonic pronouns, following the paradigm of standard French 'elle', which equates keeping the gender-neutral subject pronoun — be it 'iel', 'ille', 'al' or 'ol', etc. — as such; the other approach, exemplified in the table below with 'iel', supports differentiating (cf. analogical extension) clitics from tonic pronouns, thereby aligning with the paradigm of 'il'.

Analogical extension

Clitic subject pronoun	Tonic pronoun
il	lui
elle	elle
iel	ellui [ɛllɥi]
ils	eux
elles	elles
iels	elleux [ɛllø]

Analogical levelling

Clitic subject pronoun	Tonic pronoun
il	lui
elle	elle
iel	iel(le) [jɛl]
ils	eux
elles	elles
iels	iels(/ielles) [jɛl]

Indefinite pronouns and adjectives

Semantically, many indefinite pronouns (such as chacun or quelqu'un) share the [+human] trait of personal pronouns, functioning essentially as unspecified human referents. However, because they are quantificational rather than referential, they lack a specific natural gender/Sexus. Consequently, enforcing binary grammatical gender (Genus) on these forms forces a specific morphological marker onto an inherently unspecified referent, invariably defaulting to the masculine generic in standard French.

	Masculine	Feminine	Analytic gender-neutral	Synthetic gender-neutral
aucun·e	aucun [okœ̃]/[okɛ̃]	aucune [okyn]	aucueune [okœn]	aucan [okɑ̃]/[okan]
chacun·e	chacun [ʃakœ̃/[ʃakɛ̃]	chacune [ʃakyn]	chacueune [ʃakœn]	chacan [ʃakɑ̃]/[ʃakan]
certain·e	certain [sɛʁtɛ̃]	certaine [sɛʁtɛn]		certan [sɛʁtɑ̃]/[sɛʁtan]
tout·e	tout	toute		toude
tous/toutes	tous	toutes	toustes, touts [tuts]
quelqu'un·e	quelqu'un [kɛlkœ̃]/[kɛlkɛ̃]	quelqu'une [kɛlkyn]	quelqu'eune [kɛlkœn]	quelqu'an [kɛlkɑ̃]/[kɛlkan]

The indefinite pronoun 'quelqu'une' is extremely rare in modern French and its pendant 'quelqu'un' does not seem to be perceived as masculine by native French speakers, thus it is not clear how essential the degendering of this pronoun is.

Determiners

Grammatical note

Unlike articles, demonstrative or possessive adjectives, pronouns aren't technically determiners. For readability reasons, and because they form a relatively small paradigm compared to their corresponding adjectives, they're included in the determiners category because they're thematically coppled with the respective (demonstrative or possessive) adjectives.

Indefinite and definite article

In the discourse surrounding gender-inclusive language in French, the distinction between compounds that blend or concatenate gender-marked agentive suffixes (e.g.: directeurice) versus lexical (e.g.: sœur and frère → adelphe) and morphological substitutions (→ cognitive approach) respectively morphological derivations (→ structural approach), such as the epicene derivation 'directaire', are usually referred to as inclusif vs. neutre in queer-positive communities.

However, the concatenation of gender-marked agentive suffixes adds the missing gender, i.e. natural gender/Sexus sememe to the given personal noun, turn agent nouns from single-gender personal noun to dual-gender masculine/feminine personal noun. Accordingly, they could theoretically be cognitively interpreted as neutral, to the extent that these forms could theoretically be cognitively processed as genderneutral, i. e. neutre. Because the use of these neologisms remains peripheral in spoken French, psycholinguistic research has yet to disconfirm this possibility.

Conversely, agent nouns categorized as neutre — such as epicene derivations (e.g., coiffaire, which attaches the gender-unspecific suffix -aire to a verbal root) or lexical substitutions (e.g., Monestre, 'Mx'), as discussed higher — are inherently inclusive of all genders, making the label inclusif equally applicable to them. The pragmatic interchangeability of these labels renders them inadequate for differentiating the morphological mechanisms used to generate gender-inclusive neologisms in French. For this reason, the following table categorizes these strategies based on their structural properties — blend words being more analytic, and non blend words (epicene derivations; lexical substitions) being more synthetic.

In the following tables, the most widely adopted gender-inclusive forms are italicized. Beyond these specific instances, the majority of the forms presented have not achieved widespread currency in everyday usage. Consequently, the tables function primarily as an inventory of morphological proposals for the gender neutralization of French, highlighting the neologisms that have gained the most traction among inclusive language advocates, and LGBTQ+ communities in the Francophone world.

The underlining within the IPA transcriptions carries no phonetic or phonological significance. Rather, it is employed strictly as a visual heuristic to isolate the specific phonetic segments from the source feminine and masculine forms that have been integrated into these analytically constructed neologisms.

IPA vowel trapezium for standard French

Articles

	Masculine	Feminine	Analytic gender-neutral	Synthetic gender-neutral
Indefinite article	un [œ̃]/[ɛ̃]	une [yn]	eune [œn]	an [ɑ̃]/[an]
Definite article	le	la	lae [lae], lea [ləa]	lo, li, lu, lia

'an' is quite common, particularly in the [ɑ̃] pronunciation, where it shares a core feature with 'un': both consist solely of a nasal vowel. 'eune' [œn] combines the roundedness and degree of aperture of 'un' [œ̃] with the terminal nasal consonant [n] of 'une'. In metropolitan French, where 'un' is typically pronounced as [ɛ̃], 'eune' shares a phonetic characteristic with 'une' through the final [n], and one with 'un' through the similar degree of aperture of their vocalic nucleus.

A drawback of 'an' pronounced as [ɑ̃] is its nasality, a factor known for making vowels challenging to distinguish and learn, even for native French speakers. Consequently, [ɑ̃] might be perceived as a mispronunciation of 'un' or simply not distinct enough from 'un' to be recognized as a different morpheme.

Accordingly, regarding the morphing resp. non-morphing of the definite article with the prepositions 'de' and 'à', we'd have 'à lae' and 'de lae'.

Demonstrative adjective

Masculine	Feminine	Analytic gender-neutral	Synthetic gender-neutral	Plural
ce/cet	cette		cèd	ces

La vie en Queer proposes 'cet', which sounds the same as the feminine 'cette'; Divergenres retains 'cèx', but notes that it sounds like the word 'sexe'. A third possibility would be to voice resp. to devoice the final consonant of the feminine word, for instance turning [t] to [d], or [g] to [k]. This would allow the word to remain easily recognizable while being distinct from both the masculine and the feminine forms. This approach would be advantageous in regards to minimizing misunderstandings and memorization effort.

Demonstrative pronouns

	Masculine	Feminine	Analytic gender-neutral	Synthetic gender-neutral
Singular	celui [səlɥi]	celle [sɛl]	cellui [sɛlɥi]	ciel [sjεl]
Plural	ceux [sø]	celles [sɛl]	celleux [sɛlø]	ciels [sjεl], ceuxes [søks]

Possessives

Possessives adjectives

	Masculine	Feminine	Analytic gender-neutral	Synthetic gender-neutral
1SG	mon	ma	maon [maõ]	man [mɑ̃]/[man], mo, mi(ne), la/le mian [mjɑ̃]
2SG	ton	ta	taon [taõ]	tan [tɑ̃]/[tan], to, ti(ne)
3SG	son	sa	saon [saõ]	san [sɑ̃]/[san], so, si(ne)

The possessive adjectives 'mon', 'ton', and 'son', which are generally masculine, are also used as feminine possessive adjectives when combined with a feminine noun that begins (phonetically) with a vowel: 'mon amie', 'ton employée', 'son hôtesse', etc. Therefore, there is no need to use a possessive neologism in words starting with vowels, as the masculine and feminine gender are syncretized in this context.

The pronunciation [sɑ̃] of 'san' is a homophone of 'sang' ('blood'). Alpheratz proposes 'mu(n)', 'tu(n)', 'su(n)' as synthetic forms. However, 'tu(n)' is a homophone of the subject pronoun 'tu', and <u> — i. e. [y] — is a linguistically marked phone. Alternative forms could be 'mi(ne)', 'ti(ne)', 'sine', as only the roundness parameter (cf. [y] and [i] in the IPA) distinguishes them from the original neologisms suggested by Alpheratz. 'si(ne)' could be pronounced with an '-ne' ending to avoid homophony with 'si' (i. e. 'if'). Similar-sounding possessives can be found in Spanish ('mi'), in English ('my'), in Swedish ('min', 'din', 'sin', the last one being a gender-neutral reflexive possessive pronoun), in Norwegian, in Swiss-German, and in other Germanic languages. As 60% of of humans are multilingual, cross-linguistic influence could be used to facilitate the memorization and adoption of neologisms.

Possessive pronouns

	Masculine	Feminine	Analytic gender-neutral	Synthetic gender-neutral
Singular	le mien [lə mjɛ̃]	la mienne [la mjɛn]	lae mienn [lae mjɛ̃n]	lo miem
Plural	les miens [le mjɛ̃]	les miennes [le mjɛn]	les mienns [le mjɛ̃n]	les miems

Currently, there is no established combination of definite article and possessive pronoun. In this table, the definite article "lae" is simply paired with the possessive pronoun "mienn" for morphological reasons, as both words are of the analytic gender-neutral type. This also applies to the definite article "lo" and the possessive pronoun "miem", both of which are of the synthetic type.

Nota bene: Germanic languages encode the gender of the possessor in their third person singular — Romance languages do not. Only the gender of the possessed object is marked through flexion.

Grammatical note on English versus French possessives

English	French	Genus of possessed object
That's her bike. That's hers.	C'est son vélo. C'est le sien.	le vélo (masculine)
That's her car. That's hers.	C'est sa voiture. C'est la sienne.	la voiture (feminine)
That's his cake. That's his.	C'est son gâteau. C'est le sien.	le gâteau (masculine)
That's his watch. That's his.	C'est sa montre. C'est la sienne.	la montre (feminine)
That's Avery. Their[sing.] favorite dish is pizza. It's theirs.	Ça, c'est Avery. Son plat préféré, c'est la pizza. C'est le sien.	le plat (masculine)
That's Avery. Their[sing.] house is green. It's theirs.	Ça, c'est Avery. Sa maison est verte. C'est la sienne.	la maison (feminine)

Nouns and adjectives

Words such as 'professionnel' and 'professionnelle', which are orally epicene and, thus, indistinguishable in speech, are not included; the use of their shortened doublet form enables inclusivity and gender-neutrality in written language.

Endings from Latin '-or' and '-rix'

Endings from Latin '-or' and '-rix'

	Masculine	Feminine	Analytic gender-neutral	Synthetic gender-neutral
-eur/-euse	enquêteur	enquêteuse	enquêteureuse	enquêtaire
-eur/-rice	acteur	actrice	acteurice	actaire
-eur/-_resse1	docteur	doctoresse	docteuresse	doctaire
-eur/-_resse2	enchanteur	enchanteresse	enchanteuresse	enchantaire
-e/-esse	maître	maîtresse	maîtré/maîtrè (or maîtræ)	maîtrexe
-ard/-asse	connard	connasse	connarsse	connarde

The analytic gender-neutral forms derived from words that originate from Latin '-or' and '-rix' are already being used, although they have not been officially recognized by any French dictionary yet. Some podcasts where you can hear them are Les Couilles sur la table, Parler comme jamais and Papatriarcat.

Synthetic gender-neutral forms have the advantage of preserving the original syllable number of the word, making them less cumbersome than analytic forms. Moreover, the '-aire' suffix does already exist in contemporary French, forming epicene nouns like 'un·e destinataire', 'un·e secrétaire', 'un·e volontaire', 'un·e bibliothécaire', etc. However, several psycholinguistic studies conducted in French and in German have found that "gender-unmarked forms are not fully effective in neutralizing the masculine bias" and that "contracted double forms [such as acteur·ice] are more effective in promoting gender balance compared to gender-unmarked forms." Regarding this issue, specifically, analytic gender-neutral forms could then be a more effective solution than synthetic ones.

Endings with '-x' in the masculine

Endings from latin '-ōsus'

	Masculine	Feminine	Analytic gender-neutral	Synthetic gender-neutral
-eux/-euse	amoureux	amoureuse	amoureuseux	amoureuxe [amuʁøks] amoureusse amouré·e
-eux/-esse	dieu	déesse	dieuesse, dieusse	dieuxe

Endings with '-x' (♂︎) and '-[s]' (♀︎)

	Masculine	Feminine	Analytic gender-neutral	Synthetic gender-neutral
-x/-sse	roux	rousse		rouxe
-x/-ce	doux	douce		douxe

The synthetic gender-neutral forms in which the silent consonant of the masculine form becomes audible mantain the original number of syllables. They have an audible suffix, like the feminine forms do, without that suffix being the same as the feminine. Additionally, the fact that the audible consonant in gender-neutral form matches the consonant in the masculine suffix could facilitate the learning of these neologisms for literate French speakers. However, in cases where the masculine does not contain a silent <x> and the feminine has a distinctive suffix, such as with 'dieu, déesse', adopting the analytic approach may be more consistent in terms of spelling and inclusivity (see previous paragraph).

Endings with nasal vowels in the masculine form

Endings with nasal vowels in the masculine form

	Masculine	Feminine	Analytic gender-neutral	Synthetic gender-neutral
-ain/-aine	écrivain [Ekʁivɛ̃]	écrivaine [Ekʁivɛn]		écrivan [Ekʁivɑ̃]/[Ekʁivan]
-ain/-ine	copain [kɔpɛ̃]	copine [kɔpin]	copaine [kɔpɛn]	copan [kɔpɑ̃]/[kɔpan]
-in/-ine	cousin [kuzɛ̃]	cousine [kuzin]	cousaine [kuzɛn]	cousan [kuzɑ̃]/[kuzan]
-an/-anne	paysan [pɛizɑ̃]	paysanne [pɛizan]		paysaine [pɛizɛn]
-ien/-ienne	citoyen [sitwajɛ̃]	citoyenne [sitwajɛn]		citoyan [sitwajɑ̃]/[sitwajan]
-un/-une1	brun [bʁœ̃]/[bʁɛ̃]	brune [bʁyn]	breune, brunn [bʁœ̃n]/[bʁɛ̃n]	braine, bran [bʁɑ̃]/[bʁan]
-un/-une2	opportun [ɔpɔʁtœ̃]/[ɔpɔʁtɛ̃]	opportune [ɔpɔʁtyn]	opporteune, opportaine [ɔpɔʁtɛn]	opportan [ɔpɔʁtɑ̃]/[ɔpɔʁtan]
-on/-onne	mignon [miɲõ]	mignonne [miɲɔn]	mignonn [miɲõn]	mignaine, mignan [miɲɑ̃]/[miɲan]

The '-aine' suffix has gained popularity. However, its use in monosyllabic words like 'brun·e' may hinder comprehension, which could explain why 'bran', a form that preserves the nasality of the final vowel while only changing its place of articulation, is more widespread. Words with a '-ien/-ienne' (and obviously also '-ain/-aine') suffix cannot form a synthetic gender-neutral form with '-aine', as this would result in a word pronounced exactly the same way as the feminine one (cf. 'citoyenne'). Here, the synthetical neutral forms created with '-an' only retain masculine phonetic traits (i. e. its manner of articulation — vocalic — and its nasality trait — which is positive). Theoretically, this could lead to similar issues as discussed in the Endings from Latin '-or' and '-rix' subchapter. The same could be true with synthetic gender-neutral forms ending in '-aine', but this time in favour of the feminine. However, even though the suffix '-aine' could sound feminine, the resulting form is still easily distinguishable from the original one, since the vowels implied are oral and not nasal, and can therefore be less easily mistaken for mispronunciations — while 'écrivan', 'citoyan' and 'bran' could be (for more information, see the Indefinite and definite article subchapter).

The use of "-iste" is always genderneutral, like "feministe".

Endings with silent consonant X in the masculine and audible consonant X in the feminine

Endings with silent (♂︎) and audible (♀︎) consonant

	Masculine	Feminine	Analytic gender-neutral	Synthetic gender-neutral
-t/-te	pâlot	pâlotte		pâlode, pâlat, pâlasse
-d/-de	grand	grande		grante, granxe, gransse
-al/ale	principal	principale		principèl, principalx, principalz
-iet/iète	inquiet	inquiète		inquiède
-g/gue	oblong	oblongue		oblonk
-ier/-ière	premier [pʁəmje]	première [pʁəmjɛʁ]	premiérère, premiér [pʁəmjeʁ]
-c/-che	blanc	blanche		blank
-s/-se	antillais	antillaise		antillaisse
-s/-che	frais	fraîche	fraîchais	fraisse
-s/-sse	bas	basse	babasse	base

As the table demonstrates, no approach has achieved widespread acceptance among this category of nouns and adjectives. As discussed in the Demonstrative adjective subchapter, one intuitive approach to creating a gender-neutral form involves making the silent consonant of the masculine form audible in the neologism while voicing or devoicing it, so that its pronunciation is different from the feminine form — e. g.: 'palôt' → 'palôte' (sounds like 'pâlotte') → 'pâlode' . However, masculine words ending in a silent <s> pose a challenge: when put in the feminine form, the <s> can either become a voiced sibilant [z] or a voiceless sibilant [s] (the outcome [ʃ] is irrelevant in this issue). This inconsistency means that the silent <s> of the masculine form can represent either a voiced or a voiceless sound. While the silent consonants of other words can simply be transformed into their voiceless resp. voiced counterparts to differentiate them from the feminine, creating gender-neutral forms from words like "antillais·e" and "bas·e" requires more careful consideration. If the feminine form is pronounced with a [s], the pronunciation of the gender-neutral form must be [z] to avoid homophony; conversely, if the feminine form is pronounced [z], the gender-neutral form's pronunciation must be [s] to maintain distinctiveness.

Endings with a rounded vowel in the masculine and '-_(l)le' in the feminine

Endings with a rounded vowel (♂︎) and '-_(l)le' (♀︎)

	Masculine	Feminine	Analytic gender-neutral	Synthetic gender-neutral
-eau/-elle	jumeau	jumelle	jumelleau, jumeaulle	jumal
-ou/-olle	fou	folle	follou, foulle
-aux/-ales	spéciaux	spéciales	spécialaux, spéciaules
-eux/-lle	vieux/vieil	vieille	vieilleux, vieuille

The pronunciation of /a/ as [ɔ] in Canadian French can lead to ambiguity in gender-neutral forms like 'spéciaules', as they could be interpreted as the feminine singular and plural, or masculine singular form of 'spécial·e'.

Endings with consonant X in the masculine and consonant X with phonetic change triggered by presence of final '-e' in the feminine

Masculine consonant X and feminin consonant X modified by '-e'

	Masculine	Feminine	Analytic gender-neutral	Synthetic gender-neutral
-c/-che	sec	sèche	seckèche, sèchec
-f/-ve	naïf	naïve	naïfive, naïvif

Florence Ashley argues that the order in which the feminine and masculine morphemes are combined does not matter. Usage, intelligibleness and personal preference ultimately determine which forms will gain traction. However, the prosodic sequencing of syllables in French can impact intelligibility. For instance, in the pronunciation of 'naïvif' (neutral form) as [na'i'vif], contrary to 'naïfive', the end of the word is acoustically identical to 'vif' (i. e. 'vivacious') and can thus lead to confusion.

Gender-neutral suggestions for some gender-specific nouns (natural gender/Sexus)

Gender-specific nouns (Sexus) and current gender-neutral suggestions

Masculine	Feminine	Analytic gender-neutral	Synthetic gender-neutral
roi	reine	roine
héros	héroïne	héroïnos	héroan [Eʁoɑ̃]/[Eʁoan], héroal
frère	sœur	frœur, srère	adelphe
Monsieur	Madame		Monestre

Discussion

According to linguist Roswitha Fischer, citing Renate Bartsch, the adoption of neologisms into a language's lexicon depends on three factors:

1. Prestige: The neologism must be championed by a group of influential individuals who hold social, political, and economic power.
2. Written Usage: The neologism must gain traction in written communication, becoming accepted in literature, media, and formal communication.
3. Linguistic Contact: The neologism must circulate in areas where multiple dialects and varieties of the language converge, fostering mutual understanding and assimilation.

Currently, gender-neutral French neologisms lack widespread adoption, even within LGBT and nonbinary communities. Their presence is marginal in written form, and their usage in spoken language limited. However, the Internet serves as an area for these neologisms to reach a global audience of Francophone speakers from Africa, America, Europe, and minority language communities all around the world. Additionally, descriptive approaches to language (cf. Le Robert), contrary to prescriptive approaches (cf. L'Académie), have lead to the acceptance of one of them — 'iel' — in written discourse.

For neologisms to gain wider adoption, they must be learnable and user-friendly. This means they should be easy to understand and easy to remember (due to morphological motivation); easy to pronounce while adhering to the phoneme inventory and phonotactics of the language; familiar to the target audience; and responsive to a genuine need. If these criteria are met, neologisms will start being adopted by avant-garde language users. As these avant-garde figures gather large online communities, the frequency of usage of these neologisms will increase, fostering familiarity among the Francophone community. From then, some of these neologisms could potentially enter the standard vocabulary.

Main resources

1. ★La vie en Queer (2018): Petit dico de français neutre/inclusif. Online at: https://lavieenqueer.wordpress.com/2018/07/26/petit-dico-de-francais-neutre-inclusif/.★
2. Divergenres (2021): Guide de grammaire neutre et inclusive. Québec. Online at: https://divergenres.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/guide-grammaireinclusive-final.pdf.
3. Wiki Trans (2019): Comment parler d'une personne non binaire ? Online at: https://wikitrans.co/2019/12/25/comment-parler-dune-personne-non-binaire/.
4. Wiki LGBTQIA FR (2023): Néopronoms. Online at: https://lgbtqia.fandom.com/fr/wiki/Neopronoms.
5. Alpheratz (2018): Genre neutre.TABLEAUX RÉCAPITULATIFS de mots de genre neutre (extraits). Online at: https://www.alpheratz.fr/linguistique/genre-neutre/.