Gender neutral language in French: Difference between revisions

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    The '-aine' suffix has gained popularity. In monosyllabic words such as 'brun·e', however, the comprehension might be hindered, which could explain why we rather find 'bran', that conserves the nasality of the final vowel, only changing its place of articulation. Words with a '-ien/-ienne' (and obviously also '-ain/-aine') suffix cannot form a synthetic gender neutral form with '-aine', as it would result in a word that is pronounced the exact same way as the feminine one (cf. 'citoyenne'). Here again, the synthetical neutral forms created with '-an' only retain a masculine phonetic trait (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 discriminable from the original one, since the vowels implied are oral and not nasal, and can thus more difficultly be taken for mispronunciations — while 'écrivan', 'citoyan' and 'bran' could (for more information see the Indefinite and definite article-subchapter).
    The '-aine' suffix has gained popularity. In monosyllabic words such as 'brun·e', however, the comprehension might be hindered, which could explain why we rather find 'bran', that conserves the nasality of the final vowel, only changing its place of articulation. Words with a '-ien/-ienne' (and obviously also '-ain/-aine') suffix cannot form a synthetic gender neutral form with '-aine', as it would result in a word that is pronounced the exact same way as the feminine one (cf. 'citoyenne'). Here again, the synthetical neutral forms created with '-an' only retain a masculine phonetic trait (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 discriminable from the original one, since the vowels implied are oral and not nasal, and can thus more difficultly be taken for mispronunciations — while 'écrivan', 'citoyan' and 'bran' could (for more information see the Indefinite and definite article-subchapter).


    ==== Endings with silent consonant <math>x</math> in the masculine and audible consonant <math>x</math> in the feminine ====
    ==== Endings with silent consonant X in the masculine and audible consonant X in the feminine ====
    {| class="wikitable"
    {| class="wikitable"
    |+Endings with silent (♂︎) and audible consonant (♀︎)
    |+Endings with silent (♂︎) and audible consonant (♀︎)
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    |
    |
    |}
    |}
    /a/ is sometimes pronounced as [ɔ] in Laurentian French, which is why neologisms as 'spéciaules' could be understood as the feminine singular and plural as well as 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 ====
    {| class="wikitable"
    {| class="wikitable"
    |+
    |+
    !
    !
    ! colspan="4" |Endings with consonant <math>x</math> (♂︎) and consonant <math>x</math> with phonetic change triggered by presence of final "-e" (♀︎)
    !masculine
    !feminine
    !analytic gender neutral
    !synthetic gender neutral
    |-
    |-
    !-c/-che
    !-c/-che
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