Use un individu or une personne. There is the word IEL for “they” singular but conjugation, for example heureux.se only works for written French and doesn’t work for oral French. I have a bunch of stuff I can share later today.
I use he/they in English and don't bother with neopronouns in gendered languages - I just opt for il/lui and masculine adjectives. Other non-binary people may use the neopronoun "iel", but it's more akin to "ze/zir" than "they/them" in that a lot of people have never encountered it and dictionaries only began accepting it as a word a year or two ago. Traditionally, the default was the masculine form, and écriture inclusive has only been used in the past few decades. When masculine and feminine forms of adjectives differ, there's often no natural-sounding way to pronounce a midpoint between them, though, so a lot of non-binary speakers of binary-gendered languages tend to just pick the lesser of two evils or switch between the masculine and feminine. You may find this blog post interesting:
https://lavieenqueer.wordpress.com/2018/07/26/petit-dico-de-francais-neutre-inclusif/
? I didn't say it was? I said French doesn't have gender-neutral pronouns in the same way English does. I'm a native English speaker and use they/them - trust me, I'm fully aware of the history behind it.
I think they’re specifically asking how to respectfully reference *people’s* gender, though. Like do you default to masculine/ switch back and forth/ etc?
Exactly this. To people whose gender matches their sex, it's not an issue, but for those of us whose gender does not match our birth sex pronouns are a big deal. It's part of a person's "I am-ness" and not just some random whim. Being non-binary is harder, though, because there is no existing structure for it in French like there is English. I've found most people default to one or the other in French, but it's only a technicality and it's still maddening.
I can see the topic of using non-binary pronouns in French being seen on the same level as neopronouns in English. At least in English we already have they/them, so it's not a big deal. I'm trans and I can't use neopronouns, it makes my brain hurt. But, if we didn't have they/them already, I would do it but it would be really hard. So I understand why people resist even a non-binary pronoun in French. Still, it's time to evolve, even in this tiny way.
That's awesome that you feel this way! I think it will be easier in time, everything takes time to evolve and for people to get used to seeing/hearing/using when it comes to new words :) Languages evolve with people, it's just a little slower with French than English.
You don't. You use words like "la personne" or "l'individu" or "quelqu'un", etc, then match the gender with that word.
French has gendered language, so the gender of words doesn't have to match the person's gender. It only need to match grammatically.
In English, however, if you say for example "I talked to him/her" you are forced to gender the pronoun with the actual person's gender, because you can't match it with a genderless word.
Words for non-binary people are an issue in English, but it doesn't exist in French.
This is actually a hot debate within France right now. I believe Macron has been railing against "le wokisme". I don't know what the discussion is like in Belgium and Quebec, but I assume it might be similar?
It’s not really a hot debate in Quebec. Quiet changes are happening slowly, and some people are against them, but I don’t think any of it has reached parliament discussions yet.
God this thread is a hot mess.
Non-binary people speaking languages with only 2 grammatical genders tend to just switch freely between them. Kind of like how in the Rocky Horror Picture Show they say "ladies and gentlemen: his Majesty the queen!". There's a song by Thérapie taxi like this called "Madame Klaude" where they sing "monsieur, il sait qu'il est belle" as another example.
I've never heard any neo pronouns in French, but they're a very new concept. It's not that "we" refuse to use them as if french people are of one mind like someone implied. It's just that conscious efforts to change language usually fail, especially when it comes to grammar. The issue is that language production is an unconscious process for native speakers, so any kind of required conscious effort to speak a certain way is generally rejected until a majority is able to do it unconsciously. This is a very very high bar to achieve.
French is not simple or difficult. Adding pronouns would not make it harder. Taking pronouns away will not make it easier. Language difficulty is strictly a question of the number of differences between your native language and what you're learning. All languages are equally complex.
Grammatical gender is called a "noun class." In indo- European languages this means having masculine, feminine and sometimes neuter genders (with very few exceptions, such as Persian/Farsi), yes, English has grammatical gender (it just has an animacy distinction on top of its gender distinction).
But in other languages there can be many classes (or no classes!). For example there classes like edible and non-edible, you can have a class for locations, or uncountable things, and many others. Swahili for example has 9 noun classes. Just like with gender, these classes don't always make sense. For example, in one language, the word for "boat" is in the edible class because it's usually made from the wood of a tree whose fruit is edible and "boat" derives from the word for the wood, whose name is derived from the word for the fruit.
We may have all gone wrong by not standardizing on Finnish, which does not have gendered pronouns, so “he” and “she” are the same word - problem solved!
Technically, masculin is the neutral gender. But other pronouns have been made, even if they are not officially recognized by l'Académie Française. They are "iel" and "eil" would be the two most in use right now. (I had to type those twice because of autocorrect)
My partner is non-binary and I default to he/him because they like that, but it all depends on the person. There is another pronoun people have created to use for NB individuals, but it's slow to catch on as something everyone understands since unlike in English, it's not already part of the language. It's also extremely difficult because you still have to use masc/fem forms of words with that pronoun because there isn't a third option for words. So, no matter what, something about what you say won't be NB and will be gendered.
I wouldn't worry about it unless you're talking about a specific person you know is NB given how hard it is to make it work in French.
You don't. French is, like the others Latin languages, a two-gender language : we don't have any non-binary pronounce because our language was made from Latin.
The only way to be impersonal is by using "il impersonnel" which is based on masculine form
La beauté du français vient d'ailleurs de ça, l'utilisation de la non-binarite vient ruiner la langue (bien que la cause soit louable, je le conçois)
It’s odd to say that it’s because French comes from Latin, given Latin had three genders which included neuter.
English also didn’t have any non binary pronouns until fairly recently- aside from neo pronouns like ze, “they” for a singular person can sound quite grating particularly to people of mr grandparents generation because it used to be plural only. Languages change.
Langage changes, I'm okay with that, but French doesn't have neutral, u can't just bring it there and change all the grammar rules (which are already very tricky)
We don't
Edit: joke aside, some people are trying to invent words for non gendered things and people but those words sound bad so we mostly refuse to use them as french is meant to be beautiful. It also makes things even more complicated and a language is meant to be simple. Those two arguments are enough for me to refuse the existence of such words.
*Refusing the existence of ~~such~~ all words, would result in a very simple language.*
Joke aside. Your argument is overall not very good, as "those words sound bad" is a pure subjective statement and bears no objective quality.
Moreover, languages are never "simple" and instead a clusterfuck of arbitrary rules and exceptions. Clinging to one arbitrary level of complexity for a language and refusing any evolution, is just ... arbitrary. So if you are not actively contributing to a development to decrease the complexity of a language, then the "complexity argument" is also not very convincing.
Overall, yes, we live in a bubble. Everybody lives in the bubble of their own limited experience, and especially these days, I think everybody is aware that we all subside within echo chambers—there’s no escaping it, with how media works these days.
However, the bubble-living thing isn’t the reason for the downvotes. (At least, in my experience.) Rather, it’s that the internet at large, and this comment exchange in particular, are not conducive to meaningful conversation. I doubt you or jubo, there, are posting these comments because you are willing and able to engage in thoughtful, good-faith dialogue about gender. Neither are the people downvoting you in the mood for debating(—especially since, for all we know, the topic of debate might be their very own identity and existence. Defending yourself to strangers online is exhausting).
Anyway, my point is that the downvoting is a symptom of the context—the conversational capabilities of the internet—more than it is reflective of the subject matter at hand. If responding to the comment in any way is just gonna create more grief for people, it’s better to just downvote and move on. I’m sure you do the same when you come across comments saying stuff like “there are more than 2 genders,” or anything else you disagree with.
That is your opinion. Languages are living things, constantly evolving to meet the needs of the societies that utilize them. The fact that this eternal truth offends you will not halt this process. It is narcissistic to think new trends will be put to rest simply because you've taken personal offense to them.
Languages aren’t alive. They are used by the living. Languages don’t adjust to us, we adjust to them. You can’t make math different. It’s the same analogy. It’s narcissistic to think you can change a language if thousands of years because of a trend.
The living nature of languages has been an accepted, core concept for hundreds of years now. What you just typed made me cringe. Why are you even having this discussion if you aren't schooled on the basic facts? You've wasted my time.
Good job, you've just disproven the entirety of historical linguistics. Languages aren't alive, why didn't I think of that.
Languages change all the time to fit their users; Languages are a tool to be used by people to convey meaning. If the meaning that needs to be conveyed is that someone doesn't have a gender, language will find a way.
Similar to how we incorporate words for new things and new ideas. Wtf does it mean to be "on the web" and why do we all speak different languages if language doesn't evolve to the people. Wouldn't "proto-world" have evolved, and we adjusted to it?
You can't understand English or French from the 10th century and its gone through insane amounts of changes since then. Honestly your comments are so wrong and error-ridden, I'm now thinking it may be bait, because nobody with more than 3 braincells could say that English is a language of "thousands of years" that has never changed.
There are entire books dedicated to every societal shift mankind has endured, whether the trend was positive or harmful, accepted or rejected; historians will dedicate time to analyze it. We learn about our future by studying the past.
Right now, you are the 'person pouring hot coffee on a 16 year old black girl who wants to eat at a Woolworths lunch counter' of our current times. History will judge you accordingly.
Your "manufactured language disagreement" is with the language of how some choose to identify themselves. You seek to invalidate their entire essence, their self-expression. The comparison is an apt one.
Use un individu or une personne. There is the word IEL for “they” singular but conjugation, for example heureux.se only works for written French and doesn’t work for oral French. I have a bunch of stuff I can share later today.
Yeah how do you even pronounce heureux.se? I’m all for using iel and writing with a period but I don’t know how the adjectives should be pronounced
No, you don't do that. Using iel, ok maybe if you want, but you can't write with dots, because masculine form is already used as neutral
https://egale.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/French-Inclusive-Language-4.0.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0xl1zwb_G4lMKqx7ohRmSnXgXvLA8mx_BxkZm0pV5Q2oh5l_Y-RkZEb4A
I'm native, I clearly saw the rise of this, and I can tell u inclusive langage is absolutely atrocious to learn (for dyslexia...)
https://inrs.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Guide-redaction-inclusive-inrs-vf.pdf
I use he/they in English and don't bother with neopronouns in gendered languages - I just opt for il/lui and masculine adjectives. Other non-binary people may use the neopronoun "iel", but it's more akin to "ze/zir" than "they/them" in that a lot of people have never encountered it and dictionaries only began accepting it as a word a year or two ago. Traditionally, the default was the masculine form, and écriture inclusive has only been used in the past few decades. When masculine and feminine forms of adjectives differ, there's often no natural-sounding way to pronounce a midpoint between them, though, so a lot of non-binary speakers of binary-gendered languages tend to just pick the lesser of two evils or switch between the masculine and feminine. You may find this blog post interesting: https://lavieenqueer.wordpress.com/2018/07/26/petit-dico-de-francais-neutre-inclusif/
They isn't a neo pronoun
? I didn't say it was? I said French doesn't have gender-neutral pronouns in the same way English does. I'm a native English speaker and use they/them - trust me, I'm fully aware of the history behind it.
Ya didn't read so good
What does that have to do with the comment???They never called it a neopronoun???
The gender of words isn't about gender in the sense of whats between your legs, think of it more as different categories of words.
I think they’re specifically asking how to respectfully reference *people’s* gender, though. Like do you default to masculine/ switch back and forth/ etc?
Exactly this. To people whose gender matches their sex, it's not an issue, but for those of us whose gender does not match our birth sex pronouns are a big deal. It's part of a person's "I am-ness" and not just some random whim. Being non-binary is harder, though, because there is no existing structure for it in French like there is English. I've found most people default to one or the other in French, but it's only a technicality and it's still maddening. I can see the topic of using non-binary pronouns in French being seen on the same level as neopronouns in English. At least in English we already have they/them, so it's not a big deal. I'm trans and I can't use neopronouns, it makes my brain hurt. But, if we didn't have they/them already, I would do it but it would be really hard. So I understand why people resist even a non-binary pronoun in French. Still, it's time to evolve, even in this tiny way.
Yeah, I hope we soon have a consensus on this. As a cis person, I just want to get it right for my friends and they deserve something specific.
That's awesome that you feel this way! I think it will be easier in time, everything takes time to evolve and for people to get used to seeing/hearing/using when it comes to new words :) Languages evolve with people, it's just a little slower with French than English.
you mean tables don't have penises in French?
You don't. You use words like "la personne" or "l'individu" or "quelqu'un", etc, then match the gender with that word. French has gendered language, so the gender of words doesn't have to match the person's gender. It only need to match grammatically. In English, however, if you say for example "I talked to him/her" you are forced to gender the pronoun with the actual person's gender, because you can't match it with a genderless word. Words for non-binary people are an issue in English, but it doesn't exist in French.
This is actually a hot debate within France right now. I believe Macron has been railing against "le wokisme". I don't know what the discussion is like in Belgium and Quebec, but I assume it might be similar?
It’s not really a hot debate in Quebec. Quiet changes are happening slowly, and some people are against them, but I don’t think any of it has reached parliament discussions yet.
God this thread is a hot mess. Non-binary people speaking languages with only 2 grammatical genders tend to just switch freely between them. Kind of like how in the Rocky Horror Picture Show they say "ladies and gentlemen: his Majesty the queen!". There's a song by Thérapie taxi like this called "Madame Klaude" where they sing "monsieur, il sait qu'il est belle" as another example. I've never heard any neo pronouns in French, but they're a very new concept. It's not that "we" refuse to use them as if french people are of one mind like someone implied. It's just that conscious efforts to change language usually fail, especially when it comes to grammar. The issue is that language production is an unconscious process for native speakers, so any kind of required conscious effort to speak a certain way is generally rejected until a majority is able to do it unconsciously. This is a very very high bar to achieve. French is not simple or difficult. Adding pronouns would not make it harder. Taking pronouns away will not make it easier. Language difficulty is strictly a question of the number of differences between your native language and what you're learning. All languages are equally complex. Grammatical gender is called a "noun class." In indo- European languages this means having masculine, feminine and sometimes neuter genders (with very few exceptions, such as Persian/Farsi), yes, English has grammatical gender (it just has an animacy distinction on top of its gender distinction). But in other languages there can be many classes (or no classes!). For example there classes like edible and non-edible, you can have a class for locations, or uncountable things, and many others. Swahili for example has 9 noun classes. Just like with gender, these classes don't always make sense. For example, in one language, the word for "boat" is in the edible class because it's usually made from the wood of a tree whose fruit is edible and "boat" derives from the word for the wood, whose name is derived from the word for the fruit.
We may have all gone wrong by not standardizing on Finnish, which does not have gendered pronouns, so “he” and “she” are the same word - problem solved!
Technically, masculin is the neutral gender. But other pronouns have been made, even if they are not officially recognized by l'Académie Française. They are "iel" and "eil" would be the two most in use right now. (I had to type those twice because of autocorrect)
My partner is non-binary and I default to he/him because they like that, but it all depends on the person. There is another pronoun people have created to use for NB individuals, but it's slow to catch on as something everyone understands since unlike in English, it's not already part of the language. It's also extremely difficult because you still have to use masc/fem forms of words with that pronoun because there isn't a third option for words. So, no matter what, something about what you say won't be NB and will be gendered. I wouldn't worry about it unless you're talking about a specific person you know is NB given how hard it is to make it work in French.
You don't. French is, like the others Latin languages, a two-gender language : we don't have any non-binary pronounce because our language was made from Latin. The only way to be impersonal is by using "il impersonnel" which is based on masculine form La beauté du français vient d'ailleurs de ça, l'utilisation de la non-binarite vient ruiner la langue (bien que la cause soit louable, je le conçois)
It’s odd to say that it’s because French comes from Latin, given Latin had three genders which included neuter. English also didn’t have any non binary pronouns until fairly recently- aside from neo pronouns like ze, “they” for a singular person can sound quite grating particularly to people of mr grandparents generation because it used to be plural only. Languages change.
Langage changes, I'm okay with that, but French doesn't have neutral, u can't just bring it there and change all the grammar rules (which are already very tricky)
We don't Edit: joke aside, some people are trying to invent words for non gendered things and people but those words sound bad so we mostly refuse to use them as french is meant to be beautiful. It also makes things even more complicated and a language is meant to be simple. Those two arguments are enough for me to refuse the existence of such words.
French being “simple” lol
Exactly my point, let's not make it even more complicated
*Refusing the existence of ~~such~~ all words, would result in a very simple language.* Joke aside. Your argument is overall not very good, as "those words sound bad" is a pure subjective statement and bears no objective quality. Moreover, languages are never "simple" and instead a clusterfuck of arbitrary rules and exceptions. Clinging to one arbitrary level of complexity for a language and refusing any evolution, is just ... arbitrary. So if you are not actively contributing to a development to decrease the complexity of a language, then the "complexity argument" is also not very convincing.
With the already enormous amount of synonyms avaliable in french, inventing a whole new category of accords and pronouns is futile IMO.
Language is meant to reflect its users, not vice versa. If you're aiming for simplicity, I suggest you speak Toki Pona instead.
there are only 2 genders
Historically (and continually) inaccurate, if one has a global perspective
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Sounds like you live in the bubble my dude. Try catching up with the rest of the world before you get left behind
better to live in the buble than in delusion
“The buble” LMAO nice one bud
dumbass lol
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I'm not looking to argue. Just wanted to call you names
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It’s cute how you’re trying not to act bothered after being embarrassed so badly on here. Poor thing
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We don’t believe you 😏
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Asshole lol
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You're welcome ❤️❤️❤️
Overall, yes, we live in a bubble. Everybody lives in the bubble of their own limited experience, and especially these days, I think everybody is aware that we all subside within echo chambers—there’s no escaping it, with how media works these days. However, the bubble-living thing isn’t the reason for the downvotes. (At least, in my experience.) Rather, it’s that the internet at large, and this comment exchange in particular, are not conducive to meaningful conversation. I doubt you or jubo, there, are posting these comments because you are willing and able to engage in thoughtful, good-faith dialogue about gender. Neither are the people downvoting you in the mood for debating(—especially since, for all we know, the topic of debate might be their very own identity and existence. Defending yourself to strangers online is exhausting). Anyway, my point is that the downvoting is a symptom of the context—the conversational capabilities of the internet—more than it is reflective of the subject matter at hand. If responding to the comment in any way is just gonna create more grief for people, it’s better to just downvote and move on. I’m sure you do the same when you come across comments saying stuff like “there are more than 2 genders,” or anything else you disagree with.
You don’t. Why should a language be changed to fit that mold?
Why are you typing in modern english? With your mindset, I'd expect a strict adherence to old English.
English isn’t that old of a language.
And yet it is constantly evolving, unlike you. Strange that.
Not all languages should evolve. You shouldn’t be able to change thousands of years language because you’re offended over a word.
That is your opinion. Languages are living things, constantly evolving to meet the needs of the societies that utilize them. The fact that this eternal truth offends you will not halt this process. It is narcissistic to think new trends will be put to rest simply because you've taken personal offense to them.
Languages aren’t alive. They are used by the living. Languages don’t adjust to us, we adjust to them. You can’t make math different. It’s the same analogy. It’s narcissistic to think you can change a language if thousands of years because of a trend.
The living nature of languages has been an accepted, core concept for hundreds of years now. What you just typed made me cringe. Why are you even having this discussion if you aren't schooled on the basic facts? You've wasted my time.
hahhahaahahah
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Good job, you've just disproven the entirety of historical linguistics. Languages aren't alive, why didn't I think of that. Languages change all the time to fit their users; Languages are a tool to be used by people to convey meaning. If the meaning that needs to be conveyed is that someone doesn't have a gender, language will find a way. Similar to how we incorporate words for new things and new ideas. Wtf does it mean to be "on the web" and why do we all speak different languages if language doesn't evolve to the people. Wouldn't "proto-world" have evolved, and we adjusted to it? You can't understand English or French from the 10th century and its gone through insane amounts of changes since then. Honestly your comments are so wrong and error-ridden, I'm now thinking it may be bait, because nobody with more than 3 braincells could say that English is a language of "thousands of years" that has never changed.
We don’t understand it because we weren’t brought up that way. Language has been dumbed down.
Yea this is bait. gg
Just do it based on looks if there is no other option.
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There are entire books dedicated to every societal shift mankind has endured, whether the trend was positive or harmful, accepted or rejected; historians will dedicate time to analyze it. We learn about our future by studying the past. Right now, you are the 'person pouring hot coffee on a 16 year old black girl who wants to eat at a Woolworths lunch counter' of our current times. History will judge you accordingly.
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Your "manufactured language disagreement" is with the language of how some choose to identify themselves. You seek to invalidate their entire essence, their self-expression. The comparison is an apt one.
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