Genderless language

A genderless language is a natural or constructed human language that has no category of grammatical gender. Some linguists use the term "noun class" to be a broader categorization which includes the categorization by gender as a special case.[1]

The notion of "genderless language" must not be confused with that of gender-neutral language. Also, a discourse in a genderless language is not necessarily gender-neutral,[1] although genderless languages exclude many possibilities to gender-related stereotypes, such as using masculine pronouns when referring to persons by their occupations.

Genderless languages do have various means to recognize gender, such as gender-specific words, ("she", "mother", "son", etc.), as well as gender-specific context, both biological and cultural.[1]

Genderless languages are listed in Noun class: languages without noun classes or grammatical genders.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Yasir Suleiman (ed.) (1999) "Language and Society in the Middle East and North Africa", ISBN 0-7007-1078-7, Chapter 10: "Gender in a genderless language: The case of Turkish", by Friederike Braun