Gender-neutral language in non-Indo-European languages

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Gender-neutral language in non-Indo-European languages refers to language that attempts to refer neither to males nor females when discussing an abstract or hypothetical person whose sex cannot otherwise be determined. Many of these languages do not have grammatical gender; however, this does not mean that the languages do not face any issue with regards to gender-neutrality.


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[edit] Finno-Ugric languages

[edit] Finnish

Finnish has only gender-neutral pronouns (it completely lacks grammatical gender). The word hän is completely gender-neutral and means both she and he. The suffix -tar or -tär can be added to some words (mostly professions) to "feminize" the word, for example näyttelijä (actor) - näyttelijätär (actress) if required, but these forms are not commonly used any more; using the basic word for both genders (näyttelijä for male and female actors) is the norm. There are also some professions or expressions in which the word mies (man) is an integral part (for example, puhemies, meaning chairman; palomies, fireman, etc.). These are mostly retained in their traditional forms (unless a suitable gender-free word is easily available). As a special case the chairperson of Finnish Parliament is referred as puhemies irrespective of the actual gender of the person - either herra puhemies (Mr. Chairman) or rouva puhemies (Mrs. or Madame Chairman).

Despite having gender-neutral pronouns, Finnish joins most other Western languages in having strongly gender-biased adjectives. As an example, in the first few years after women were permitted to serve as volunteers in the Finnish armed forces, they were required to swear to defend the country in a manly way (miehuullisesti).

[edit] Hungarian

Hungarian does not have gender-specific pronouns and lacks grammatical gender: referring to a gender needs explicit statement of "the man" (he) or "the woman" (she). "ő" means "he/she" and "ők" means "they". Hungarian distinguishes persons and things, as you refer to things as "az" (it) or "azok" (those).

However there is a way to distinguish between male and female persons having a certain profession by adding "nő"-"woman" to the end of the word (színész-szinésznő (actor-actress, lit. "actorwoman" or rendőr-rendőrnő, lit. policeman-policewoman). This though does not work with all the professions as quite many would sound very awkward (as "postás" meaning "letter carrier", lit. "someone associated with the post", where there is no such thing as "postásnő" "mailwoman"). This usage has been criticized by Hungarian feminists, as it implies that the normal word or profession is masculine in nature and must only be qualified if a woman is performing it.

[edit] Other natural languages

[edit] Basque

Basque language is remarkably gender-free. Most nouns have no gender or there are different words for males and females (ama, "mother"; aita, "father"; aita-ama, "father and mother"; guraso, "parent"). Some words take suffixes according to gender (aktore, "actor"; aktoresa, "actress"), but they are rare, and both purists who avoid Romance influence and the Basque Institute of the Woman recommend against it. For animals, there are particles (oilo, "hen"; oilar, "cock"; hartz eme, "female bear"; hartz arra, "male bear") or different words (behi, "cow"; zezen, "bull").

While there are no gender pronouns, verbs can mark gender in the intimate singular second person (this provides no information since the listener already knows his or her gender): hik duk, "you (male) have it"; hik dun, "you (female) have it". The verb is marked for addressee's gender, if they are intimate singular, whether or not they are referred to in the clause. Non-sexism supporters propose substituting those forms by the more formal ones: zuk duzu "you have it". In earlier stages, the relation between hik and zuk was like that of you and thou in old English. Some Basque dialects already avoid hik as too disrespectful.

It should be noted that the use of a gender-free language has not made the historical Basque society a non-sexist one.

[edit] Chinese

The various forms of the Chinese language are remarkably gender-neutral due to its underlying structure, and possesses few linguistic markers of gender, even though Chinese society has historically been shown to have significant degree of male dominance in the social structure as well as education and written literature. Critics of gender-neutral language modification in other languages see this as evidence of a lack of cause-and-effect relationship between a society's gender relations and the use of grammatical gender in its language.

Comprehension in Chinese is almost wholly dependent on word order as Chinese has no inflection for gender, tense, or case. There is also very little derivational inflection, instead the language relies heavily on compounding to create new words. A Chinese word is thus inherently gender-neutral unless it contains a root for man or woman. For example, the word for doctor is yīshēng (醫生) and can only be made gender-specific by adding the root for male or female to the front of it. Thus to specify a male doctor, one would need to say nányīshēng (男醫生). Under normal circumstances both male and female doctors would simply be referred to as yīshēng.

Spoken Chinese also has only one third-person pronoun, tā for all situations (though -men 們 / 们 can be added as a plural suffix). Tā can mean he, she, or it in any case. However, the different meanings are written with different characters: "他", containing the human radical "亻", for he, or a person of undetermined gender; "她", containing the female radical "女", for she; and "它" for it. Despite this, there is no "he/she" issue in Chinese, because pronouns are usually implied from context, and replacing "她" with "他" causes no grammatical conflict. It should be noted that the character for "she", containing the 'woman' radical (glyphic element of a character's composition), was invented in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century; prior to this, the character indicating "he" today was used for both gender pronouns--it contains the 'person' radical, which, as noted above, is not gender-specific. Likewise there exists a written female form for you, 妳.

[edit] Hebrew

In Hebrew, which has a high degree of grammatical gender, virtually every noun (as well as most verbs and pronouns of the second and third person) is grammatically either masculine or feminine. As a result of campaigns by advocates for employment equality or gender neutral language modification, laws have been passed in Israel that require job ads to be written in a form which explicitly proclaims that the job is offered for both males and females. The separator "/" is often used, for example "dru'shim/ot", "maz'kir/a."

Note that certain feminine plural verb forms of earlier Hebrew have become archaic in modern Israeli Hebrew, so that the old masculine plural forms are now used for both masculine and feminine.

[edit] Japanese

See also: Gender differences in spoken Japanese

Japanese has no grammatical gender and number. Thus, isha (医者) can mean one or many male doctors, one or many female doctors, or many male and female doctors. Another example of the lack of European-style gender in language is the using of compound characters. The 'sha' in geisha (芸者, 'art person') and 'ja' in 'ninja' (忍者, 'sneaking person') are the same character. Pronouns are generally avoided unless the meaning is unclear.

The word "kare", grammatically a noun, is conventionally used in English teaching materials to translate the English word "he"; however, unlike English "he", it is seldom used in actual Japanese conversation, it is more of a literary word. The same happens with "kanojo", literary for "she". "Kanojo" is used in conversation, but mainly in the sense of "girlfriend", not "she".

The plural of "kare", "karera" (彼ら) may also refer to groups of females, and is preferable to the rather demeaning (彼女達, "those women" or "girlfriendfolk"). Gender neutral language modification advocates suggest avoiding "karera" by instead using "those people" (あの人達, ano hito-tachi), which they praise as gender neutral, grammatical and natural-sounding. It should be noted though that until the Meiji Restoration in the 19th century, kare (彼) was used for both genders, kanojo (彼女) being, and still is, 'girlfriend'.

In general, Japanese, unlike European languages, has no grammatical gender, although certain words and expressions semantically refer specifically to males or specifically to females (such as haha "mother", bijin "beautiful woman", kakkou ga ii "is handsome"). However, the language spoken by Japanese women is markedly different from the speech of Japanese men in terms of vocabulary, use of grammar and idiom, pronunciation etc.

An increasing number of Japanese avoid the traditional common terms for [your] wife (奥さん)and [your] husband　(ご主人) which literally mean "the person inside" and "the master". Japanese custom has also dictated that women are expected to use a polite form of language keigo in more situations than men. This expectation has diminished more among urban young Japanese in the past decade.

The major issues with regarded to gendered language in Japanese are overall speech patterns. There exists a "woman's language" ('onna kotoba') and "man's language" ('otoko kotoba'). Women's speech has different sentence endings than that of men, especially in non-polite speech. (Polite speech tends to be less differentiated, with male speech becoming more similar to female). A good example is the gender-neutral use of 'watashi' or 'watakushi' for 'I' in polite speech. In informal speech, women are still more likely to use 'watashi' or 'atashi', while men use 'boku', 'ore' or 'washi'. Women's speech is characterized by sentences ending with 'wa' (rising intonation) and by dropping the verbs 'da' or 'desu' (meaning "is"). Male speech never drops the word 'da' in a sentence. The differences are quite intricate, but very persistent, and there is little or no movement in Japan to change male/female speech patterns, since changes can sound awkward or confusing. However some historians note that over time Japanese as a whole has become more feminine. Words like money, 'kane', were never used by men casually with the honorific prefix 'o' before recent times. Today 'okane' is standard Japanese and is used by men in non-polite situations, something unthinkable 100 years ago.

[edit] Korean

Korean, like a few other East Asian languages such as Japanese, does not use pronouns in everyday language, because the meaning is clear in the context. In case of confusion, there are pronouns to clarify the position, but normally the actual subject (person) is used rather than the pronoun. As for job titles, these are not gender-specific. Again, the meaning is normally clear in the context.

[edit] Tagalog

Tagalog, like other Philippine languages, is gender neutral; pronouns do not even have specific genders.

However, Tagalog has had over three centuries of Spanish influence. So, gender is usually differentiated in certain Spanish loanwords by way of -o (masculine) and -a (feminine). These words mostly refer to ethnicities, occupations, and family. Some examples are: Pilipino/Pilipina (Filipino/a), Pinoy/Pinay (nickname for a Filipino person) Amerikano/Amerikana (American), tindero/tindera (vendor), inhinyero/inhinyera (engineer), tito/tita (uncle/aunt), manong/manang (elder brother/sister), and lolo/lola (grandfather/grandmother).

An exception to this would be presidente (president) which, unlike in Spanish, refers to either a male or a female.

[edit] Tamil

Tamil has a gender-neutral form for the third-person plural, which is also used for the third-person singular in all formal communication. Most job titles are derived from this form as they are mostly used in a formal context. They are thus gender-free.

[edit] Turkish

Turkish is a gender neutral language, as most other Turkic languages. Nouns are in generic form and for both males and females and this generic form is used. For example: Doktor (doctor), eczacı (pharmacist), mühendis (engineer) etc.

The Turkish equivalent for he, she and it is O. For example:

  • O, gece yürümeyi çok seviyor. (He/she/it likes walking at night)
  • Onu çok seviyorum. (I love him/her/it so much)

There are a few exceptions, where it is mandatory to provide gender (because of the nature of the foreign word origins):

  • İş + Adam + ı = İşadamı (Business + Man = Businessman)
  • İş + Kadın + ı = İşkadını (Business + Woman = Businesswoman)

There are very minor exceptions, which are constructed from native Turkish words after 1900s:

  • Bilim + Adam + ı = Bilim adamı (Science + Man = Scientist)
  • Bilim + Kadın + ı = Bilim kadını (Science + Woman = Scientist)

However, there is an alternative gender neutral use for words like these, which becomes more popular since 2000s:

  • Bilim + İnsan + ı = Bilim insanı (Science + Person = Scientist)

[edit] Constructed languages

[edit] Esperanto

In Esperanto the generic form of nouns is the same as the male form and different from the female form -- for example, doktoro(j) = "doctor(s) (male or unspecified sex)", doktorino(j) = "female doctor". Some words, like patro ("father"), are intrinsically masculine, but there is no root word to express "a parent".

The prefix ge- may be used for groups of mixed sex, for example, gedoktoroj ("male and female doctors"). Reformers have used ge- to create explicitly sex-neutral singulars such as gepatro, "a parent". Though not generally adopted, this usage has appeared in some authoritative reference works.

Explicitly marked feminine forms such as doktorino may be used to emphasize the noun's female character, but unmarked forms are also commonly used for females. Reformers have proposed morphologically well-formed but rarely used forms like virdoktoro (literally "man-doctor") and neologisms like -iĉ- (doktoriĉo) to emphasize maleness.

For information on gendered and non-gendered pronouns in Esperanto, see Gender-neutral pronoun: Esperanto.

Arguments about the character and implications of "gendered" or "sexist" features in Esperanto closely parallel those raised for other, particularly European languages.

Ido, a constructed language that is heavily based on Esperanto but seeks to avoid what some see as Esperanto's shortcomings, does not have this asymmetric sex-marking system. Instead, nouns in Ido for kinds of people are sex-neutral in their ordinary form, but may be made either female- or male-specific by use of a suffix. Examples: sekretario, secretary --- sekretariulo, man secretary --- sekretariino, woman secretary; doktoro, doctor --- doktorulo, man doctor --- doktorino, woman doctor. It also has a "pan-gender" pronoun lu, which, somewhat ambiguously, can refer to beings of any (or no) gender as well as inanimate objects. (The words "man", "woman", "baby", "goat", and "table" are all referred to by lu.)

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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