Gender neutral language

Gender-neutral language, also called gender-inclusive language, is the practice of using words that don't give an idea of someone being female or male. For example, the word "fireman" gives the idea that a person in that work is male. An offer for a job as a "cleaning lady" gives the idea that only a woman should do the job. The gender-neutral alternatives are to say "fire fighter" and "janitor," respectively. Then it is easier to see that these jobs can be done by a person of any gender. Gender-neutral language is important in feminism, because changing the way that people talk can help make sexist ideas less common. For example, the sexist idea that some jobs should only be done by people of certain genders.

Gender-neutral language is also important to many people who have nonbinary gender identities. For one reason, this kind of talk helps fight against nonbinary erasure, which is the common but wrong and sexist idea that there are only two genders. Since gender-neutral language doesn't give the idea that a person is male or female, it can also apply to people who identify as other genders, outside of the gender binary. Nonbinary people can ask to be talked about in this way.

Arabic
The Washington Post has reported that "Modern standard Arabic, based on Koranic classical Arabic, additionally has a dual option for nouns and verbs that doesn’t imply a specific gender. Some people therefore use the dual of they and you — “huma” (هما) and “intuma” (انتما) — as a gender-neutral alternative. Colloquial Arabic spoken today has largely done away with the dual, so this form can sound very formal to those not in the know."

Chinese
See also: Glossary of Chinese gender and sex terminology.

Pronouns Titles
 * tā. Verbally all gendered pronouns sound the same, and so they technically can be gender neutral.
 * 先生 (xian sheng). A gender neutral term to refer to a teacher, a new acquaintance with whom you are unfamiliar, or anyone with whom you are not on a first-name basis, though it is usually masculine-based.
 * 师傅 (shi fu). A gender neutral term, though it is usually masculine-based, conveying respect to someone if you don't know their name, and it means "master."
 * 老师 (lao shi). Standard word for teacher.
 * 博士 (bo shi). Standard word for professor.
 * 老板 (lao ban). Standard term for one's boss (say at work).
 * 同学 (tong xue). Standard term for one's classmates

Family Terms
 * 孩子 (hai zi). Standard gender neutral term for child.
 * 家长 (jia zhang). Standard gender neutral term for parent.

Professions
 * 服务员 (fu wu yuan). Standard word for server and/or gender neutral term for waiter/waitress.

Romantic


 * 对象 (dui xiang). Term that means one's romantic partner. It is gender neutral.
 * 配偶 (pei ou). Term that means one's partner in marriage. It is gender neutral.

Cornish
Cornish, like all other modern Celtic languages, has two grammatical genders: masculine and feminine. Although the way that gender-neutral nouns and non-binary people are referred to in terms of grammatical gender, and the impact that those nouns would have on adjectives, is yet to be determined, Cornish has a complete set of non-binary 3rd person singular pronouns:

English
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 originally 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. Remnants of grammatical gender survived only in personal pronouns and some common nouns. 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 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."

French
See also: Glossary of French gender and sex terminology.

French, like other Romance languages (except for Asturian), traditionally has only two grammatical genders: masculine and feminine. Additionally, according to the standard language rules, masculine is always treated as the generic gender, meaning that a mixed-gender group will always be referred to in masculine (and not in feminine, unless everyone is a woman). These rules have been established over the centuries by men and male-led institutions like the Académie Française. In 1675, talking about the grammar of the French language, abbot Dominique Bouhours stated "When both genders meet, the most noble must prevail". French inclusive language refuses such rules, and feminist and queer activists work hard to try and rid French of its sexism. They have developed over the last few decades different ways to adapt the French language to be more inclusive of women and gender minorities.

However, there is not one single way to speak inclusively in French, but rather, there are a wide variety of tools and workarounds one can use to adapt one's language. It should also be noted that the "mainstream" inclusive language used by an ever growing number or people, journals and institutions aims at being inclusive of women. These changes, albeit fairly minimal, are still very controversial with certain people. The problem of a language inclusive of the nonbinary community hasn't yet reached the mainstream debate and remains mostly confined within queer and feminist circles.

Finally, as it is not officially recognised, it is important to mention that inclusive French might not be accepted in contexts where formal language is expected; such as exams, language proficiency tests, official documents etc.

Singular pronouns
These pronouns are considered neopronouns and are used to refer to nonbinary people or someone whose gender is unknown. They are not formally recognised and are not usually used in what could be called "mainstream inclusive French". Their use is mostly limited to nonbinary people, feminist and queer circles as well as the internet. Because nothing is codified, there are almost no limits on what can be used, and a wide variety of options have been created and adopted by different people. Due to these circumstances, it is common for French gender non-conforming people to accept different sets of pronouns/neopronouns, or any pronouns/neopronouns. The lists below are not exhaustive.

Pronouns

 * Zett
 * As
 * Dey

Hindi
See also: Gender neutral language in Hindi.

Hindi is a gendered language.

Pronouns
Personal pronouns in Hindi are gender neutral.

Verb Conjugations
Although in 2014, India, the parent culture of Hindi formally recognized the rights of transgender, non-binary, genderqueer and gender-questioning people to determine their gender identification as going beyond the existing binary classifications of male or female, Hindi has lagged behind in that, in Hindi verbs are still conjugated along traditional binary male-female classifications.

This traditional gendered nature of verb conjugations in Hindi are problematic as they force people with non-binary identities to misgender themselves.

In attempt to address the limitations posed by the gendered nature of verb conjugations in Hindi, and to ensure students are not forced to misgender themselves, in 2016, at the University of Texas at Austin, I shared an avant-garde proposal for a non-binary verb conjugation option that does not currently exist in Hindi. This proposal has largely been well received by colleagues and students alike (with some predictable backlash). We are currently in the process of creating a webpage dedicated to making Hindi pedagogy more inclusive, which will also include details of this proposal.

The proposal in a nutshell:

In the gendered binary option: - male voice conjugations end in आ ā for masculine singular conjugations and ए e for masculine plural conjugations. - female voice conjugations end in ई ī for both, feminine singular and plural conjugations, with ई ī sometimes being nasalized to ईं ī̃  for plural conjugations. For a non-binary voice option, we suggest conjugations end in ओ o for both, non-binary singular and plural conjugations, with ओ o sometimes being nasalized to ओं õ for plural conjugations, along principles similar to conjugations for the female voice.

Adopting ओ o / ओं õ for a non-binary voice verb conjugation seems to be a straightforward approach without any disruption to the principles of Hindi verb conjugations.

So, for example, in the Imperfective/Habitual tense the verb खाना / khānā “to eat”, would be conjugated as:

[MS = masculine singular, MP = masculine plural, FS= feminine singular, FP = feminine plural, NBS = non-binary singular, NBP = non-binary plural]

Present day binary conjugation:

MS-Present:   मैं खाता हूँ    mãĩ  khātā hū̃ (I eat- male voice)                              MS-Past:   मैं खाता था mãĩ khātā thā  (I used to eat - male voice)

MP-Present:   हम खाते हैं   ham khāte hãĩ  (we eat- male voice)                         MP-Past:   हम खाते थे  ham khāte the (we used to eat - male voice)

FS-Present:    मैं खाती हूँ    mãĩ  khātī hū̃  (I eat - female voice)                          FS-Past:    मैं खाती थी mãĩ  khātī thī   (I used to eat - female voice)

FP-Present:    हम  खाती हैं   ham khātī hãĩ (we eat - female voice)                    FP-Past:    हम  खाती थीं ham khātī thī̃  (we used to eat - female voice)

Suggested non-binary conjugation for inclusion:

NBS-Present: मैं खातो हूँ    mãĩ khāto hū̃  (I eat - suggested non-binary voice)   NBS-Past: मैं खातो थो  mãĩ khāto tho (I used to eat - suggested non-binary voice)

NBP-Present: हम  खातो हैं  ham khāto hãĩ (I eat - suggested non-binary voice) NBP-Past:  हम  खातो थों   ham khāto thõ (we used to eat - suggested non-binary voice)

The grassroots non-binary conjugations suggested above, for now would largely apply only to people according to their gender-identification.

The same principle of using ओ o / ओं õ for a non-binary voice, when transferred on to certain classes of nouns and adjectives, may make one pause to ponder over how it may affect other parts of speech, specifically, possession (particularly the possessive particles in Hindi), the plural oblique case, and in some instances, overlap between the imperative/command construction and the one-time completed action past tense. However, going deeper, one realizes that interference is minimal, if at all. Just as some other aspects of Hindi grammar which on the surface seem the same, being clearly context and/or marker dependent become non-issues, this too, being clearly either context and/or marker dependent would not pose a problem. Also, having the ओ o/ओं õ sound ending to indicate possession is not alien in Hindi as observed in various varieties like Braj Bhāshā, to name one. Besides, for now this point is quite mute, given that currently there is no class of non-binary nouns in Hindi!

Italian
Italian, as with other romance languages, presents challenges for inclusivity of nonbinary genders in that grammatically there only exists masculine and feminine genders. Although it descended from Latin, which had 3 genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), it has since lost its neuter form. Nevertheless, different approaches may transform the way Italian is spoken to make it more gender inclusive.

Nouns
Italian has masculine and feminine grammatical genders, although some nouns ending in -e (singular)/ -i (plural) hint at a suggested neutral form not dissimilar from gender ambiguous nouns in Spanish (ex. el estudiante and la gente both end in -e even though they are gendered masculine and feminine). One idea therefore may be to use these endings for nouns to neutralize language. Possible noun endings that could work:
 * e, i. Already present in standard Italian
 * en, is. Nonstandard and not regularly used, taking from latin endings.
 * u, un, us. Nonstandard, taking from latin endings.
 * @. Similar to "chic@s" in Spanish
 * ə. The schwa, or scevà in Italian. In some regional languages, especially Neapolitan, the schwa is commonly found at the end of words, which can make many gendered words sound almost gender neutral. When spoken quickly, for listeners it can sound similar to removing the vowel, although it isn't because the schwa is a distinct sound.
 * *. The asterisk is used at the end of words to represent gender neutral vowels. This method has been used by Queer Italian activists and even has been sported in some Italian pride media.

Personal Pronouns

 * Loi/Luoi. Nonstandard Italian, not regularly used. (Nonbinary option as "singular they")
 * Ilu. Nonstandard Italian, status of use unknown.
 * Il@. Nonstandard Italian, status of use unknown.
 * Lau. Nonstandard Italian, status of use unknown.
 * Leu. Nonstandard Italian, status of use unknown.
 * Ci. Present in Standard italian as a pronoun that is neutral, but is used in only specific grammatical structures.
 * Ne. Present in Standard Italian as a pronoun that is neutral, but like Ci, it is only used under certain circumstances.

Irish
The Irish language (Gaeilge) presents some challenges to creating a gender neutral way of speaking. Every noun is gendered in either masculine or feminine grammatical gender, with accompanied binary forms for adjective agreement, pronouns and prepositions.

Nouns
Nouns in Irish are categorized into masculine and feminine grammatical genders, which in turn dictate the way nouns behave with the definitive articles "an" and "na", initial consonant mutations and the formation of adjectives. Gendered nouns correspond to gendered pronouns as stand ins (ex. masculine, Sé, or feminine, Sí). Nouns do seem to possess standard endings for the most part, although there are some exceptions. Irish nouns have 4 grammatical cases: nominative/accusative, vocative, genitive and prepositional.

Masculine endings include the following
 * ending in a broad consonant
 * occupational nouns ending in -óir/oir, -éir/eir, -úir/uir
 * single syllable words ending in -eacht or -acht
 * end with the masculine diminutives -ín or -án
 * end with -ste
 * most loan words are masculine (including derivatives using -ach)

Feminine endings include:
 * ending in a slender consonant
 * multiple syllable words ending in -eacht, -acht, or íocht.
 * ending in -eog or -óg
 * ending in -chan
 * are place names ending in -lann
 * most countries, rivers and languages are feminine.

(it could be argued since -eacht and -acht occur as both feminine and masculine nouns that there is some gender ambiguity/neutralized gender, and perhaps these could be neuter endings for nouns)

Pronouns
Pronouns in standard Irish Gaelic are as follows:
 * Sé - meaning he in English, is a masculine pronoun.
 * Sí - meaning she in English, is a feminine pronoun.
 * Siad - meaning they in English, is neutral but a plural pronoun

Native speakers and new speakers alike have been thinking up helpful gender neutral alternatives. Some of these gender neutral pronouns include:
 * Siad - though not commonly used, some people have used this in place of binary pronouns, although some a critical of using it this way because they worry it will confuse people, because of Siad being used as a plural pronoun.
 * Siú - suggested from some learners in the duolingo community, it bears resemblance to Sé and Sí but stands alone as a gender neutral alternative. Not regularly used. Also bears similarity to siùd, meaning "those"
 * Duí - non-standard, used in place of Sí and Sé, it derives from the word duine which translates to person. Bear in mind that the grammatical gender of duine itself is grammatically masculine in gender.
 * Cí - non-standard, nonbinary pronoun inspired from Gaulish "Chí"
 * Són - Old Irish pronoun meaning "This" (It's modern variant, seo, means the same)
 * Intí - Old Irish pronoun meaning one/he/she
 * S` - A possibly ambiguous way to use the simple Slender S sound "S" but shortened without the masc or femme endings. Tá S` go maith
 * Sin - this has been in use by some native speakers. it's literal meaning is "that". Alternative ways of spelling Sin could include Sinh, S'n, S-n or 'Sinhe'. The "Nh" is a borrowed ending from old gaelic, pronounced as a regular N or N followed by an H. Sinh, S'n and S-n would all be pronounced as Sin In some dialects of Irish and in Scottish Gaelic, Sinn/Sinne is used as a pronoun meaning We in english.
 * Ea - a gender-neutral pronoun regularly used in modern Irish, but usually restricted to certain grammatical circumstances.
 * Amhain - The adjectival form meaning "one" (used for numbers when counting people). The use for this, is unknown.
 * Amh - Neo pronoun acting as a shortened version of Amhain, meaning "one person". Not used in contemporary gaelic.

Irish has three grammatical forms for personal pronouns: conjunctive form, disjunctive form and emphatic form.

Conjunctive form

The conjunctive form is used when the subject follows the verb. Standard Irish sentence structure is Verb Subject Object or VSO. Forms corresponding to the non-standard pronouns above include Siú,Duí and Cí.

Example: Ritheann siú or "they (sg.) run" Ritheann sin or "they (sg.) run" Ritheann cí or "they (sg.) run" Ritheann sea or "they (sg.) run"

Disjunctive form

The disjunctive form is used when the pronoun isn't the subject or the subject pronoun doesn't follow the verb. Forms corresponding to the non-standard pronouns above include Iú,Dhuí and Chí

Examples: Is dalta sin or "they are a student" Is duine dhuí or "they are a person" Is garda chí or "they are a police officer" Buailim mé iú or "I hit them" Buailim mé dhuí or "I hit them" Buailim mé chí or "I hit them" Is muinteoir ea or "They sg. are a teacher"

Emphatic form

Emphatic form is used to emphasize pronouns and is similar to the English use of italics to give words a bit more weight. Conjunctive and Disjunctive forms exist within the Emphatic form. Forms for the nonstandard pronouns include Suisa,Duísean and Císa (emphatic conjunctive) and Uisa, Dhuísean and ''Chísa (emphatic disjunctive).

Examples: Is dhuísean! or "It's ''them'" Is suisa! or "It's them" Is císa! or "It's them" Is seasa or

Prepositional pronouns

In addition to these other forms of pronouns, The irish language has "prepositional pronouns", which create specific forms of gender pronouns depending on the type of preposition. Bear in mind the table below contains only the neutral singular versions of these pronouns---Likewise, these are proposed pronouns and non-standard forms, some of them inspired by the neuter gender endings found in Old Irish.

Family terms
There are words that would be categorized in binary genders but could be used as neutral sounding words.
 * Páiste means child, (plural páistí), grammatically masculine.
 * Tuismitheoir means parent (plural tuismitheoirí), grammatically masculine.
 * Mo ghra or Gra can be used in a neutral sense to say "my love" or "love" when referring to a romantic partner.

See also: Glossary of Irish Gender and Sex Terminology.

Japanese
See also: Glossary of Japanese gender and sex terminology.

Japanese does not have grammatical gendered structures (i.e. conjugations or noun endings), but there are many gendered aspects of the language. Specific information, such as the gender of a person being referred to, is often implied through other context in the conversation. There are however, specific sets of vocabulary that are assigned to narrow demographics such as young boys (僕 boku = "I" or "me") versus young girls versus a young woman (あたし atashi = feminized "I" or "me"). Certain words and expressions semantically refer to only one gender group, such as (伯母ちゃん) obaachan for a grandmother or old woman.

Korean
See also: Glossary of Korean gender and sex terminology.

Latin
Latin is essentially a historical language, but it is still used by a small but vibrant community worldwide. It starts to have some LGBT terminology, like "homosexualitas"/"homophylophilia" (homosexuality), "propensio sexualis" (sexual orientation), "intersexualitas" (intersexuality), "identitas generis" (gender identity) etc., but modern neologisms remain a tricky issue in the language. Also, Latin traditionally makes extensive use of generic masculine, which is thus difficult to avoid. If one is ready to use terms that didn't exist in the classical language (or had a different meaning then), but have nevertheless been in use for centuries (e.g. "persona", "individuum"), it is possible to use a mix of terms of different grammatical genders and add other words as appositions aligned in gender in order to convey gender neutrality, e.g. "homo filius", "persona filia" and "individuum filium" in order to express "child" (in the sense of offspring). For "enby", "nebinium" has been proposed.

Norwegian
Norwegian is a language with three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter, but they have nothing at all to do with real gender. For example, "kvinne", which means "woman", "kusine", which means a female cousin, "jente", which means "girl", and "dronning", which means "queen", are all or can be masculine nouns. There are also a few odd words, such as romkamerat, an inclusive word meaning room-mate. The word "kamerat" means male friend.

Family terms

 * Ektefelle: An inclusive word for a spouse.
 * Barn: An inclusive word for a child.
 * Søskenbarn: An inclusive word for a cousin.
 * Forelder: A word for a parent.

Pronouns

 * Seg: An extremely common, standard word for "themself" or "themselves".
 * Si: The feminine possessive form of 'seg'. It indicates belonging to the subject, but not the gender/lack of gender of the subject (or even the object).
 * Sin: The masculine possessive form of 'seg'. Its function is similar to the function described above.
 * Sitt: The neuter possessive form of 'seg'. Its function is similar to the function described above.


 * Hen: An inclusive third-person pronoun. The Norwegian Language Council (Språkrådet) is unfavourable towards use of "hen" as a general gender-neutral pronoun in formal texts (while open to change should actual language use evolve), but advises to use it when requested by a nonbinary person. At that occasion, the Språkrådet uses "hen" also as object form and "hens" as genitive form.
 * Hin: Another gender-neutral pronoun.


 * Den or Det: Pronouns that usually refer to objects (akin to English "it"), however some people choose to use these pronouns.

Other Types of Relationships

 * Venn: A standard word for "friend". "Kamerat" and "venninne", the other words, are binary.
 * Kjæreste: A person who is loved by another person, but not married to them.

Polish
There is more information about this topic here: Gender neutral language in Polish

See also Glossary of Polish gender and sex terminology.

Polish is a very gendered language. Some Polish nonbinary people create solutions such as gender-neutral verb endings, for example "chciałxm"/"chciałom"/"chciałx" instead of "chciałbym" (masculine) or "chciałabym" (feminine). In the novel Perfect Imperfection, author Jacek Dukaj used -um verb endings (e.g. "zobaczyłum" instead of the masculine "zobaczyłem" or feminine "zobaczyłam"). These have since become known as Dukaisms.

Another gender-neutral way of speaking or writing Polish is rewording phrases to use a non-gendered conjugation of a verb. For example, instead of saying "I saw" in the masculine form "zobaczyłem" or feminine form "zobaczyłam", one could say "Udało mi się zobaczyć" (I was able to see).

For written Polish, it is possible to combine the masculine and feminine forms of a noun, with a space in between the endings to acknowledge other genders. For example instead of the masculine "aktorzy" or the feminine "aktorki", one could write "aktorki_rzy".

Portuguese
Gender neutral language in Portuguese contains more information on this topic.

See also: Glossary of Brazilian Portuguese gender and sex terminology and Glossary of European Portuguese gender and sex terminology.

Pronous
The most common neutral pronouns are elu and ile, though there are many others. * The use of these pronouns is not encouraged.

Family Terms

 * Mai - mom/dad


 * Irmane - brother/sister

Russian
See also: Glossary of Russian gender and sex terminology.

Unlike English, Russian has three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. While neuter allows some nonbinary people adjectives to use, this gender is not ideal for nonbinary people for grammatical reasons. The first is that most neuter nouns decline like masculine nouns. The second is that neuter animate nouns do not change in the accusative case (though there are rare neuter animate nouns that change in the accusative plural; see "лицо" in Wiktionary), while both masculine and feminine nouns do. This implies that people using neuter words are not human.

Spanish


As a language in the Romance family, Spanish has two grammatical genders, masculine and feminine, which are part of every adjective, noun, and article. This makes it nearly impossible to speak in a completely gender-neutral in standard Spanish. Feminists, LGBT people, and other activists today are creating methods to speak Spanish in a gender-neutral way when needed. Because the ending -o is masculine, and -a is feminine, it's now common for people to substitute these with a different letter or symbol to create a neutral version. The most used and more accepted is using -e. Some common examples of this are "L@s Latin@s,"   "Lxs Latinxs,"   "Les Latines," and even "LⒶs LatinⒶs."

In Spanish the neutral word for mom/dad that would be equal to parent in English is xadre, the word madre being mom and the word padre being dad and the alternative to daddy/mommy that in Spanish would be papi/mami respectively is xami, xadi or xaxi.

All of this pronunciating the x as an s. This forms are not largely used.

For words that describe professions for example actor/actriz meaning actor/actress there are two alternatives. The first one works as any other adjective adding an 'e' to actor and the second one takes the ending of naturally gender neutral words like cantante meaning singer, taking the 'ante' and adding it to the original word's root, in this case being actuante.

Swedish


See also: Glossary of Swedish gender and sex terminology.

Traditionally, the word den has been used as a gender neutral pronoun and remains widely used today. However, depending on the context, the word den can also mean it leaving it unsatisfactory as a gender neutral pronoun for many who do not wish to be seen as comparable to an inanimate object. Since the 1960s, the person pronoun hen has become increasingly popular and will, in 2015, be added for the first time to Svenska Akademiens Ordlista (the Swedish equivalent to France's Dictionnaire de l'Académie française). Its usage, however, remains somewhat contraversial and is vigorously opposed by some.

Pronouns
The object form of hen is sometimes just hens. It is very individual.

Thai
See also: Glossary of Thai gender and sex terminology.