Gender neutral language in French: Difference between revisions

===[[wikipedia:Epicenity|Epicene]] person descriptions===

For instance, « <u>Les élèves</u> apprennent leur leçon. »; « <u>L'enfant</u> regarde la télévision. »; « <u>Les juges</u> ont pris leur décision. »; « <u>Les</u> art<u>[https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/-iste istes]</u> perdent leur travail. »; « <u>Les</u> destinat<u>[https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/-aire aires]</u> ne recevront pas leur colis à temps. ». As singular [[wikipedia:Article_(grammar)|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.<ref name=":0" />

In certain Swiss-French varieties, as in the canton of Vaud, masculine and feminine words ending in <é> resp. <ée> are pronounced differently (e. g., ''une employée'' [ynɑ̃plwaj<u>e:</u>]/[ynɑ̃plwaj<u>e:j</u>] vs. ''un employé'' [ɛ̃nɑ̃plwaj<u>e</u>]/[œ̃nɑ̃plwaj<u>e</u>]). 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 [[wikipedia:Franco-Provençal|Franco-Provençal dialects]] spoken in the region before linguistic homogenization) is being [[wikipedia:Neutralization_(linguistics)|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.

=== Monogender epicene nouns and [[wikipedia:Collective_noun|collective nouns]] ===

The table below shows gendered language ([https://www.plus.ac.at/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Gender_in_German_MWerner.pdf ''Sexus''], i. e. natural sex or an individual's gender) on the left and gender-neutral language (''Genus'', i. e. [[wikipedia:Grammatical_gender|grammatical gender]]) on the right. It should be noted that, Anders als im Englischen, French doesn't have [[wikipedia:Collective_noun|common-gender nouns]], i. e. ''[https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Utrum Utrum]'', since it systemically uses gender-specific suffixes for the derivation of its agent nouns. As discussed before, only a very small number of agent nouns are written and pronounced the same in the feminine and in the masculine.

|+Collective nouns<ref name=":11" />

![https://www.grammar-monster.com/glossary/gender-specific_noun.htm Gender-specific nouns] (''Sexus'') '''<small>morphologically gendered nouns</small>'''

!Collective nouns

|+Monogender (epicene) nouns<ref name=":11" />

!Fixed-gender epicene nouns (''Genus'') <small>Sexus-independent</small>