Gender neutral language in Portuguese

The vast majority of Portuguese words have one of two grammatical genders: the feminine or the masculine. The creation and implementation of gender neutral terms in the Portuguese language aims to make non-binary people feel included. It is important to note that, in Portuguese, there’s a distinction between neutral language and inclusive language. Though the two overlap in some aspects, the latter makes use of already existing binary terms and its main goal is to include both men and women in conversations. It comes as a response to the way Portuguese uses the masculine to encompass the feminine. This can be seen, for example, when groups are referred to with the masculine and plural form of a noun even when they’re not made-up exclusively of men.

This article will focus on neutral Portuguese language.

There are two established ways of representing language sets in the Portuguese language. The first one, ela/dela follows the same format as the English "she/her," however, it is very incomplete. In Portuguese, word endings indicate gender, so the format ela/dela/-a was suggested as an alternative. Though this format is more complete than the previous one, it has been criticized. Some of the criticisms are that it doesn't take the particularities of the Portuguese language into account; that the other elements in the language that indicate gender, like articles and demonstrative pronouns, should also be declared and that article and word ending choice are unrelated to pronoun choice. For these reasons, the recommended representation is a/ela/a, which follows the format article/pronoun/word ending. An even more complete version of this format would be a/uma/da/ela/dela/minha/essa/a. Note that, because pronouns aren't the only language elements that indicate gender in Portuguese, some people suggest calling these sets language sets instead of pronoun sets.

Third person
In Portuguese, there are two standard personal pronouns for the third person singular and two for the third person plural. Ela is equivalent to the English "she" and ele is equivalent to the English "he," while elas and eles are both equivalent to the English plural "they." Portuguese-speaking non-binary people who don't feel comfortable with these have had to come up with their own neopronouns.

* The use of these sets has been increasingly discouraged for the following reasons: they aren't convenient for people who use screen readers; they can be hard to read for people with dyslexia; they aren't orally pronounceable.