Gender neutral language: Difference between revisions

English is one of the easiest languages to speak in a gender neutral way. One reason for this is it is in the Germanic language family, it has always had three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. Another reason is that in the 1200s, English speakers stopped making gender a part of every noun, adjective, and article. Grammatical gender survived only in personal pronouns and some common nouns.<ref>Dictionary.com. "English used to have gendered nouns?! Yes!" May 16, 2012. ''Dictionary.com'' (blog). [http://blog.dictionary.com/oldenglishgender/ http://blog.dictionary.com/oldenglishgender/]</ref> On the other hand, a movement in the 18th century condemned neutral language like [[singular they]], and insisted it sounded more educated to use masculine language like "he" instead, like in Latin. All these changes to English still have effects today, and sometimes create problems. For example, old laws are not clear about whether they use "he" to mean anybody, or men only. Linguists, feminists, and LGBT people have been working on finding the best solutions to the remaining problems with gender exclusive language. Over the past century, they created hundreds of [[English neutral pronouns|pronouns]], out of the lingering belief that "singular they" pronouns will not do. From the 1970s, they have also developed alternatives to gendered words, such as "mail carrier" rather than "mailman."