Gender neutral language in French: Difference between revisions

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=== 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' ====

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

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The analytic gender neutral forms that originate from Latin '-or' and '-rix' are currently in use,<ref name=":14" /> even though they haven't been added to any French dictionary yet. Some podcasts where you can hear them are ''Les Couilles sur la table'', ''Parler comme jamais'' and ''Papatriarcat''. Apart from the italic denoted forms, most of the words depicted in the table are not in use. The table thus merely represents suggestions that have been made for neutralizing French, and features the items that have been retained by most blogs, researchers and LGBT communities in the French-speaking world.

~~Generally speaking, synthetic~~ gender neutral forms have the advantage of conserving the ~~origin~~ syllable number of the word, not sounding as lengthy as the analytic ones. In addition, the '-aire' suffix does exist in contemporary French and ~~creates~~ epicene nouns, such as 'un·e destinataire', 'un·e secrétaire', 'un·e volontaire', 'un·e bibliothécaire', etc. However, several psycholinguistic studies conducted in French<ref>Brauer, M., and Landry, M. (2008): Un ministre peut-il tomber enceinte? L'impact du générique masculin sur les représentations mentales. In: ''L'Année Psychol''. 108, 243-272. DOI: 10.4074/S0003503308002030.</ref><ref>Xiao, H., Strickland, B., and Peperkamp, S. (2023): How fair is gender-fair language? Insights from gender ratio estimations in French. In: ''J. Lang. Soc. Psychol''. 42, 82-106. DOI: 10.1177/0261927X221084643.</ref> and in German<ref>Stahlberg, D., Sczesny, S., and Braun, F. (2001): Name your favorite musician: effects of masculine generics and of their alternatives in German. In: ''J. Lang. Soc. Psychol''. 20, 464-469. DOI: 10.1177/0261927X01020004004.</ref> have found that "gender-unmarked forms are not fully effective in neutralizing the masculine bias"<ref name=":15">Spinelli, Elsa/Chevrot, Jean-Pierre/Varnet, Léo (2023): Neutral is not fair enough: testing the efficiency of different language gender-fair strategies. In: ''Front. Psychol.'' 14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1256779.</ref> and that "~~that~~ contracted double forms [such as acteur·ice] are more effective in promoting gender balance compared to gender-unmarked forms."<ref name=":15" /> Regarding this issue, analytic gender neutral forms ~~might~~ be a more effective solution than synthetic ones.

Synthetic gender neutral forms have the advantage of conserving the original syllable number of the word, resulting in them not sounding as lengthy as the analytic ones. In addition, the '-aire' suffix does exist in contemporary French and produces epicene nouns, such as 'un·e destinataire', 'un·e secrétaire', 'un·e volontaire', 'un·e bibliothécaire', etc. However, several psycholinguistic studies conducted in French<ref>Brauer, M., and Landry, M. (2008): Un ministre peut-il tomber enceinte? L'impact du générique masculin sur les représentations mentales. In: ''L'Année Psychol''. 108, 243-272. DOI: 10.4074/S0003503308002030.</ref><ref>Xiao, H., Strickland, B., and Peperkamp, S. (2023): How fair is gender-fair language? Insights from gender ratio estimations in French. In: ''J. Lang. Soc. Psychol''. 42, 82-106. DOI: 10.1177/0261927X221084643.</ref> and in German<ref>Stahlberg, D., Sczesny, S., and Braun, F. (2001): Name your favorite musician: effects of masculine generics and of their alternatives in German. In: ''J. Lang. Soc. Psychol''. 20, 464-469. DOI: 10.1177/0261927X01020004004.</ref> have found that "gender-unmarked forms are not fully effective in neutralizing the masculine bias"<ref name=":15">Spinelli, Elsa/Chevrot, Jean-Pierre/Varnet, Léo (2023): Neutral is not fair enough: testing the efficiency of different language gender-fair strategies. In: ''Front. Psychol.'' 14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1256779.</ref> and that "contracted double forms [such as acteur·ice] are more effective in promoting gender balance compared to gender-unmarked forms."<ref name=":15" /> Regarding this issue, analytic gender neutral forms could then be a more effective solution than synthetic ones.

==== Endings with '-x' in the masculine ====

{| class="wikitable"

|+

|+Endings from latin '-ōsus'<ref>CNRTL (2012): ''-EUX, élément formant''. Online at: https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/-eux.</ref>

!

! ~~colspan="4" |Endings from latin '-ōsus'<ref>CNRTL (2012): ''-EUX, élément formant''. Online at: https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/-eux.</ref>~~

!masculine

!feminine

!analytic gender neutral

!synthetic gender neutral

|-

!-eux/-euse

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|-

!-eux/-esse

|~~dieuxe~~

|dieu

|déesse

|dieuesse

|dieuxe

|-

|}

{| class="wikitable"

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

!

! ~~colspan="4" |Endings with '-x' (♂︎) and '-[s]' (♀︎)~~

!masculine

!feminine

!analytic gender neutral

!synthetic gender neutral

|-

!-x/-sse

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|

|douxe

|}

The synthetic gender neutral forms where the silent consonant of the masculine form gets pronounced allows for the conserving of the same number of syllable. They having a pronounced suffix, as the feminine forms do, without that suffix being the feminine one situates them between a feminine and a masculine word. In addition, the fact that the consonant present in the suffix of gender neutral form is the same as the one in the masculine ones could relieve memorization issues in alphabetized French speaking people. In cases however where the masculine doesn't display a silent <x> and the feminine has a characteristic suffix, such as 'dieu, déesse', adopting the analytic approach might be more coherent (cf. previous paragraph).

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|+

|-

!