The French language, grammar

gender-neutral german when

Ime out loud people just say eg étudiants et étudiantes

In writing it’s now pretty common

Étudiant.e.s is even more common in Quebec. Out loud I'd just alternate between 'étudiantes et étudiants' and 'étudiants et étudiantes'.

Anyway, I've already posted about this debacle elsewhere and am too lazy to pick up the thread again.

…the tl;dr being: in grammatically gendered languages, l'arbitraire du signe prevails 99% of the time, to the extent that to speak of 'gender' is almost a misnomer. E.g. Persian/Farsi is a genderless language, yet Iran is hardly a tolerant country as a result (take that, Sapir-Whorf). Nevertheless, active efforts to prevent linguistic inclusivity are obviously unjustified and reactionary (j'encule l'Académique française quel que soit son genre).

*l'Académie, bah

In gendered languages, gender may be a misnomer when you're talking about things that aren't humans. But once you're talking about people, their roles and the jobs they do etc., it's not arbitrary, at all.

Indeed!

At the risk of repeating myself yet again, many French people (from France) are shocked to discover that Valérie Plante is Montreal's mairesse because historically (and tellingly) that term was used to refer to the mayor's wife. Reclaiming it as a linguistic possibility for women is a necessary act, and readily accepted in a Québécois context.

An additional repetition: I do find it fascinating how English has gone in the opposite direction with regard to gendered titles: 'actress' or 'poetess' are nagl, whereas an actrice who calls herself as an acteur (understood as a neutral term, supposedly) can often (but not always) be rightly assumed to identify with the right.

Écrivain/écrivaine and auteur/autrice are better examples tbf.

English seems to be going the other way in some regards, losing female equivalents. Women are now more often actors than actresses. You'd have thought it would be better to try to give the word actress the same gravitas as actor, rather than banishing it.

Wait, it's nagl to call Zooey Deschanel an actress?

j'encule l'Académique française quel que soit son genre

Haha

Wait, it's nagl to call Zooey Deschanel an actress?

Not so much these days, no. It does get a bit confusing when, as a progressive, you're expected to do one thing in one language and the exact opposite in the other. I'm inclined to agree with Zelda, though.

The “Immortals”, as the 40 academy members ... are known

Super cringey