Gender neutral language in French: Difference between revisions

French only distinguishes gender in the third-person singular (cf. 'elle' and 'il'). Up until the 12th century, French knew the neutral subject pronoun 'el'/'al'.<ref>Marchello-Nizia Christiane. Le neutre et l'impersonnel. In: ''Linx'', n°21, 1989. Genre et langage. Actes du colloque tenu à Paris X-Nanterre les 14-15-16 décembre 1988, sous la direction de Eliane Koskas et Danielle Leeman. 173-179. DOI : https://doi.org/10.3406/linx.1989.1139. Online at: www.persee.fr/doc/linx_0246-8743_1989_num_21_1_1139.</ref> 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.<ref name=":5">Florence Ashley (2019): Les personnes non-binaires en français : une perspective concernée et militante. In: ''H-France Salon'' 11(14), p. 6.</ref> It could, however, still be a viable option for the rest of the francophone community.<ref name=":13">Alpheratz (2018): Genre neutre.TABLEAUX RÉCAPITULATIFS de mots de genre neutre (extraits). Online at: https://www.alpheratz.fr/linguistique/genre-neutre/.</ref> Nowadays, according to the ''Guide de rédaction inclusive'' (2021:14) from the Laval University,<ref name=":11">Université Laval (2021): Guide de rédaction inclusive. Online at: https://www.ulaval.ca/sites/default/files/EDI/Guide_redaction_inclusive_DC_UL.pdf.</ref> the ''Guide de grammaire neutre et inclusive'' (2021:5) from Divergenres,<ref name=":0" /> the ''Petit dico de français neutre/inclusif'' (2018) from La vie en Queer,<ref name=":6">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/.</ref>  and Wiki Trans (2019),<ref name=":7">Wiki Trans (2019): Comment parler d'une personne non binaire ? Online at: https://wikitrans.co/2019/12/25/comment-parler-dune-personne-non-binaire/.</ref> the most widely adopted subject (neo)pronoun is 'iel'. It was added to the prestigious dictionary ''Le Robert'' in 2021.<ref>Radio Télévision Suisse (2021): L'entrée du pronom "iel" dans Le Robert provoque des remous. Online at: https://www.rts.ch/info/monde/12651159-lentree-du-pronom-iel-dans-le-robert-provoque-des-remous.html.</ref> Alongside 'iel', Canadian French also uses 'ille'.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5" /> In metropolitan France, the pronoun 'al', proposed by the 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.

How do neologisms become part of the vocabulary of a language? Roswitha Fischer, citing Renate Bartsch,<ref>Bartsch, Renate (1987): ''Sprachnormen: Theorie und Praxis: Studienausgabe''. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110935875</nowiki>,</ref> puts it like this:<blockquote>"1) [T]he item is used by a prestigious group that is educated and has political and economical power; 2) it is used in written discourse; and 3) it is located in an area where several varieties come into contact and assimilate [...]."<ref name=":16">Fischer, Roswitha (1998): ''Lexical Change in Present-Day English. A Corpus-Based Study of the Motivation, Institutionalization, and Productivity of Creative Neologism''. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. Online at: <nowiki>https://books.google.ch/books?id=H93nAVbwZwwC&printsec=frontcover&hl=de#v=onepage&q&f=false</nowiki>.</ref></blockquote>Currently, gender-neutral French neologisms are not widespread, even in LGBT and, more specifically, nonbinary communities. We find isolated uses of them in the written form;<ref>Café aux étoiles. maison d'édition sereine et onirique (no data): ''Littérature''. Online at: https://cafeauxetoiles.fr/litterature/.</ref><ref>Les Ourses à plumes. Webzine féministe (2022): ''Les elfes noirs ne sont jamais noirs (1) : enjeux de la représentation dans les fictions de l'imaginaire''. Online at: https://lesoursesaplumes.info/tag/une/.</ref> their use in speech remains rather peripheral too. However, they are located on the Internet, where African, American, European and minority language francophones all around the world can technically meet. Additionally, descriptive (cf. ''Le Robert'') instead of prescriptive (cf. L'Académie) approaches have lead to one of them, 'iel', having entered written discourse.

Neologisms should be learnable. That means that they should be easily understandable and easy to remember (cf. morphological linguistic motivation), easy to pronounce — that is, they should respect the phoneme inventory and the phonotactics of the given language —, familiar and responding to a need.<ref name=":16" /> If all these criteria are met, they will start being used by some avant-gardists. If some of these avant-gardists gather big online communities, the frequency to which these words will be used will rise, creating familiarity in the francophone community with these forms. From then, some of them could find their way into the standard vocabulary.