Gender neutral language in French
The French language has two gramatical 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 professionals. However, for a range of reasons — both societal, such as misogyny,[1][2] and linguistic[3], as French was being standardized and dialect speakers were expected to learn French — grammarians ensured that these feminine designations were effectively removed from the language.[1]
Today, many people refer to the contemporary introduction of feminine designations as '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 'refeminization'[4] a more accurate term.
Even though it seems paradoxical, refeminization is part of a movement to degender the French language, as studies in various languages have demonstrated that the 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'."),[5] is not actually cognitively neutral.[6][7] By incorporating the feminine form of a word, speakers acknowledge the presence of individuals of more genders than just one.
| 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,[8] others consider that the doublets don't encompass all genders,[9] others again are unsure which form to mention first, since the order conveys information about the value the speaker gives to each item.[10]
Shortened doublets
The feminine suffix is attached to the masculine, rather than the whole word being repeated (as in classical doublets).[8][9]
| Middle dot | Dot | Parentheses | Slash | Dash |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| professionnel·les
professionnel·le·s |
acteur.rice | employé(e) | chanteur/euse | boulanger-ère |
Epicene person descriptions
For instance, « Les élèves apprennent leur leçon. »; « L'enfant regarde la télévision. »; « Les juges ont pris leur décision. ». 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 epicene occupational titles for all professions or functions.[4]
In certain Swiss-French varieties, as in the canton of Vaud, masculine and feminine words ending in '-é' resp. '-ée' are pronounced differently (i. e. 'une employée' [ynɑ̃plwaje:]/[ynɑ̃plwaje:j] versus '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, i. e. Patois, 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 epicene.
Grammatically fixed gender nouns and impersonal formulations
The table below shows gendered language on the left and neutral — i.e. grammatical gender that has nothing to do with biological sex or gender identity — language on the right.
| Inclusive gendered language | Inclusive neutral language |
|---|---|
| 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. |
| Explicit binary gender | Grammatically fixed gender |
|---|---|
| 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[12] and free-choice agreement coexisted alongside the masculine-over-feminine rule.[2][3] 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).[13] 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).[1]
« Lorsque les deux genres se rencontrent, il faut que le plus noble l’emporte. » (Bouhours 1675).[5]
« Le genre masculin est réputé plus noble que le féminin à cause de la supériorité du mâle sur la femelle. » (Beauzée 1767).[5]
| 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
Personal pronouns
Subject pronouns
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'.[14] 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.[15] It could, however, still be a viable option for the rest of the Francophone community.[16] Nowadays, according to the Guide de rédaction inclusive (2021:14) from the Laval University,[11] the Guide de grammaire neutre et inclusive (2021:5) from Divergenres,[4] the Petit dico de français neutre/inclusif (2018) from La vie en Queer,[17] and Wiki Trans (2019),[18] the most widely adopted subject (neo)pronoun is 'iel'. It was added to the prestigious dictionary Le Robert in 2021.[19] Alongside 'iel', Canadian French also uses 'ille'.[4][15] 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 [jɛl] | ille [ij][15] | al |
| Peripheral usage | ol | ul | ael |
Clitic and tonic pronouns
French distinguishes between clitic and tonic 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.[20] Currently, there is no prevailing gender-neutral clitic direct object personal pronoun; the most common ones are detailed below.
| Subject | Direct object | Indirect object |
|---|---|---|
| il | le, (l') | lui |
| elle | la, (l') | lui |
| iel | lae [lae]/lo/lan/[21]li/lu/lia, (l') | 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.[20] There are currently two competing systems:[18][17][22] one consists in syncretizing (cf. analogical levelling)[23] 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)[23] clitics from tonic pronouns, thereby aligning with the paradigm of 'il'.
| Clitic subject pronoun | Tonic pronoun |
|---|---|
| il | lui |
| elle | elle |
| iel | ellui [ɛllɥi] |
| ils | eux |
| elles | elles |
| iels | elleux [ɛllø] |
Determiners
Indefinite and definite article
The distinction between 'analytic gender-neutral' versus 'synthetic gender-neutral' is usually referred to as 'inclusif' versus 'neutre'.[4] Compounds — such as 'maon', from 'ma' and 'mon' — and portmanteau words, like 'utilisateurice', could be cognitively interpreted as neutral; at least, there have been no psycholinguistic studies disconfirming this, to the extent that these forms could technically also be called neutral. Furthermore, since gender-neutral forms are inherently inclusive of all genders, there is no reason why they cannot be called that way either. The subsequent interchangeability of these terms makes them unsuitable for differentiating these two methods of creating gender-neutral/gender inclusive words in French. For this reason, the following table distinguishes them based on their morphological properties — blend words being more analytical and non blend words being more synthetic.
The currently most widely accepted neutral forms are denoted in italics in the table. Apart from them, most of the forms depicted in the tables are not in use. The tables thus merely represent suggestions that have been made for degendering French, and feature the items that have been retained by most blogs, researchers and LGBT communities in the French-speaking world.
The underlining of phonemes in the IPA transcription of certain words does not carry any phonetic meaning: it is used solely to highlight which phonetic elements from the feminine and masculine forms have been incorporated into the analytic gender-neutral neologism.
| 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.[24] Consequently, [ɑ̃] might be perceived as a mispronunciation of 'un' or simply not distinct enough from 'un' to be recognized as a different morpheme.
Possessive adjectives
| Masculine | Feminine | Analytic gender-neutral | Synthetic gender-neutral | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1SG | mon | ma | maon [maõ] | man [mɑ̃]/[man], mo, mi(ne), mian |
| 2SG | ton | ta | taon [taõ] | tan [tɑ̃]/[tan], to, ti(ne) |
| 3SG | son | sa | saon [saõ] | san [sɑ̃]/[san], so, sine [sin] |
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)'[16] as synthetic forms. However, 'tu(n)' is a homophone of the subject pronoun 'tu', and <u> — i. e. [y] — is a linguistically marked phone.[25][26] 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 from Alpheratz. 'sine' would be the only one without an optional '-ne' ending to avoid homophony with 'si' (i. e. 'if'). Similar-sounding possessive adjectives can be found in Spanish ('mi'), in English ('my'), in Swedish ('min', 'din', 'sin', the last one being a gender-neutral reflexive possessive pronoun),[27] in Norwegian,[28] in Swiss-German,[29] and in other Germanic languages. As 60% of of humans are multilingual,[30] cross-linguistic influence could be used to facilitate the memorization and adoption of neologisms.[31][32]
Demonstrative adjective
| Masculine | Feminine |
|---|