Gender-neutrality in Spanish and Portuguese
Encyclopedia
Two of the ten most widely spoken languages, Portuguese
and Spanish
, are similar to a degree of considerable mutual intelligibility
, spoken and written. Orthographically, phonetically and syntactically they are very similar in many repects. They share many gender-neutral concerns, and that is the reason they are considered together here.
; surgeon; m./f.); advogada, advogado (pt
; lawyer; f./m.); médica, médico (both languages; physician; f./m.) If the masculine version ends with a consonant, the feminine is typically formed by adding an -a to it as well: la doctora, el doctor (es; f./m.); o doutor, a doutora (pt, m./f.). However, not all nouns ending in -o are masculine, and not all nouns ending in -a are feminine:
Invariable words in Portuguese and Spanish are often derived from the Latin participles ending in -ans and -ens (-antem and -entem in the accusative case): representante; comerciante; estudante (pt), estudiante (es). Some words that normatively epicene, can have an informal feminine ended with '-a'. Example: la jefe (es), a chefe (pt) [female boss, normative]; jefa (es), chefa (pt) [informal]. The same happens with cliente (client), although clienta seems to appear more often in Spanish than in Portuguese.
A few problematic cases remain:
, it is traditional to use the masculine form of nouns and pronouns when referring to both males and females. Advocates of gender neutral languages modification consider this to be sexist and favor new ways of writing and speaking.
(@) to replace -o -a or even -e: l@s niñ@s, @s trabalhador@s.
The anarchist circled A (Ⓐ) is also used in this manner, especially in radical political writing (¡CompañerⒶs!).
Many people, though, prefer use of the slash (/) as in (el/la candidato/a).
The ligature æ
, proposed in Português com Inclusão de Gênero (PCIG, Portuguese with Inclusion of Gender) can be used in the same way. This proposal is also valid for Spanish. Escritoræs (writers) can replace escritoras/es or escritores/as. See also Alternative political spellings.
and OOo Writer
, allow font size changes to specific number of points
. In blogs, Wikipedia itself and other HTML editors, the
According to the PCIG proposal, Spanish and Portuguese speakers can pronounce the at-sign using the phoneme /ɔ/ and the ligature with /ɛ/.
However, some Spanish speakers are concerned that this proposal is unlikely to be adopted, since the Spanish language does not distinguish /ɔ/ and /ɛ/ from /o/ and /e/ respectively, and most of its speakers would therefore not even notice a difference in pronunciation.
The Diccionario panhispánico de dudas, published by the Real Academia Española, says that the at-sign is not a linguistic sign, and should not be used from a normative point of view.
As for Portuguese, these two phonemes are widely used, but almost always in stressed syllables. What is new and requires a little practice is the use of the two phonemes in non-stressed syllables. Nouns and adjectives that vary in gender are paroxitone or proparoxitone and, according to PCIG, the use of the two phonemes should not change the stress
. Examples:
The phoneme ɔ is between the a characterist of feminine nouns and the o characteristic of masculine nouns in the scale of vowel height, which can be characterized symbolic of gender inclusion. Analogously, the "gender-inclusive" ɛ is intermediate step between the "feminine" [a] and the "masculine" e.
can also use expressions with at-sign (biólog@ in Galician
), ligature æ
(outoræs in Mirandese language and autor/a in Aragonese language
).
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
and Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, are similar to a degree of considerable mutual intelligibility
Mutual intelligibility
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is recognized as a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related languages can readily understand each other without intentional study or extraordinary effort...
, spoken and written. Orthographically, phonetically and syntactically they are very similar in many repects. They share many gender-neutral concerns, and that is the reason they are considered together here.
Traditional Spanish and Portuguese orthography regarding genders
In both languages, the feminine is usually marked with the suffix -a and it is generally easy to make a feminine noun from a masculine one by changing the ending -o to -a: cirujano, cirujana (esSpanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
; surgeon; m./f.); advogada, advogado (pt
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
; lawyer; f./m.); médica, médico (both languages; physician; f./m.) If the masculine version ends with a consonant, the feminine is typically formed by adding an -a to it as well: la doctora, el doctor (es; f./m.); o doutor, a doutora (pt, m./f.). However, not all nouns ending in -o are masculine, and not all nouns ending in -a are feminine:
- Singular nouns ending in -o or -a are epiceneEpiceneEpicene is an adjective for loss of gender distinction, often specific loss of masculinity. It includes:* effeminacy — a man with characteristics that are traditionally feminine...
(invariable) in some cases: testigo (es; witness; either male or female); caixa (pt; cashier; either female or male).
- Nouns with the epicene ending -ista, such as dentista, ciclista, turista, especialista (dentist, cyclist, tourist, specialist; either male or female in both languages) are almost always invariable. One exception is modisto (es; male fashion designer), which was created as a counterpart to modista (es; fashion designer, or clothes maker).
- Some nouns ending in -a refer only to men: cura, that is "priest" in Spanish, a word which ends in -a but is grammatically masculine, for a profession held only by men.
Invariable words in Portuguese and Spanish are often derived from the Latin participles ending in -ans and -ens (-antem and -entem in the accusative case): representante; comerciante; estudante (pt), estudiante (es). Some words that normatively epicene, can have an informal feminine ended with '-a'. Example: la jefe (es), a chefe (pt) [female boss, normative]; jefa (es), chefa (pt) [informal]. The same happens with cliente (client), although clienta seems to appear more often in Spanish than in Portuguese.
A few problematic cases remain:
- Presidenta used to be "the president's wife", but there have been several women presidents in Latin American republics, and in modern usage the word means mainly a female president. Some feel that presidente can be treated as invariable, given that it ends in -ente, but others prefer to use a different feminine form.
- El policía (es; the policeman). Since la policía means "the police force", the only useful feminine counterpart is la mujer policía (the police woman). (In Portuguese, policial can be used for both genders, policewoman and policeman.)
- O político (pt; the politician). Female politians are usually described as o político mulher, using the masculine definite articleArticle (grammar)An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...
.
- Juez (es, male judge). Many new judges in Spain are women. Since the ending of juez is uncommon in Spanish, some prefer being called la juez while others have created the neologism jueza. Common nouns ending in -z are usually feminine, as in the cases of vez and paz. (In Portuguese, juíza is formed normally from juiz, male judge.)
Social aspects
Activists against perceived sexism in language are also concerned about words where the feminine form has a different (usually less prestigious) meaning:- An ambiguous case is "secretary": a secretaria is an attendant for her boss or a typist, usually female, while a secretario is a high-rank position — as in secretario general del partido comunista (es), secretário-geral do partido comunista (pt) —, usually held by males. With the access of women to positions labelled as "secretary general" or similar, some have chosen to use the masculine gendered la secretario and others have to clarify that secretaria is a decision position, not a subordinate one.
- An offensive example is hombre público (es) ["public man", a politician] and mujer pública (es) ["public woman", a prostitute].
Proposals for gender-neutral spelling
As in other Romance languagesRomance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
, it is traditional to use the masculine form of nouns and pronouns when referring to both males and females. Advocates of gender neutral languages modification consider this to be sexist and favor new ways of writing and speaking.
At-sign (@), slashes (a/o), ligature (æ) and anarchist symbol (Ⓐ)
One of the proposed "gender-neutral" alternate spelling, seen most often in Spanish-speaking countries, refers to use of the at-signAt sign
The at sign , also called the ampersat, apetail, arroba, atmark, at symbol, commercial at or monkey tail, is formally an abbreviation of the accounting and commercial invoice term "at the rate of"...
(@) to replace -o -a or even -e: l@s niñ@s, @s trabalhador@s.
The anarchist circled A (Ⓐ) is also used in this manner, especially in radical political writing (¡CompañerⒶs!).
Many people, though, prefer use of the slash (/) as in (el/la candidato/a).
The ligature æ
Æ
Æ is a grapheme formed from the letters a and e. Originally a ligature representing a Latin diphthong, it has been promoted to the full status of a letter in the alphabets of some languages, including Danish, Faroese, Norwegian and Icelandic...
, proposed in Português com Inclusão de Gênero (PCIG, Portuguese with Inclusion of Gender) can be used in the same way. This proposal is also valid for Spanish. Escritoræs (writers) can replace escritoras/es or escritores/as. See also Alternative political spellings.
Small at-sign
Inside PCIG, there is also a suggestion to utilize a small at-sign as lower-case letter, as in "muit@s menin@s". Preferred size is 25%-40% less than the regular '@'. Many computer programs allow selective font size reduction. Text editors, like MS WordMicrosoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...
and OOo Writer
OpenOffice.org Writer
OpenOffice.org Writer is the word processor component of the OpenOffice.org software package. Writer is a word processor similar to Microsoft Word and Corel's WordPerfect, with some of their features....
, allow font size changes to specific number of points
Point (typography)
In typography, a point is the smallest unit of measure, being a subdivision of the larger pica. It is commonly abbreviated as pt. The point has long been the usual unit for measuring font size and leading and other minute items on a printed page....
. In blogs, Wikipedia itself and other HTML editors, the
small tag can be used. Wikipedia GUI has even a button to facilitate edition, enabling content contributors to write "<small>@</small>" in order to produce an '@'.Proposals for a gender-neutral pronunciation
Opponents of the use of '@' and 'æ' as letters in these languages feel that these characters are a kind of degradation. Many also raise the question of how these new words are to be pronounced. Proposals exist, though, such as those made by PCIG.According to the PCIG proposal, Spanish and Portuguese speakers can pronounce the at-sign using the phoneme /ɔ/ and the ligature with /ɛ/.
However, some Spanish speakers are concerned that this proposal is unlikely to be adopted, since the Spanish language does not distinguish /ɔ/ and /ɛ/ from /o/ and /e/ respectively, and most of its speakers would therefore not even notice a difference in pronunciation.
The Diccionario panhispánico de dudas, published by the Real Academia Española, says that the at-sign is not a linguistic sign, and should not be used from a normative point of view.
As for Portuguese, these two phonemes are widely used, but almost always in stressed syllables. What is new and requires a little practice is the use of the two phonemes in non-stressed syllables. Nouns and adjectives that vary in gender are paroxitone or proparoxitone and, according to PCIG, the use of the two phonemes should not change the stress
Stress (linguistics)
In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
. Examples:
- Since, 'médico' [ˈmɛdiko] and 'médica' [ˈmɛdika] are proparoxitones, 'médic@' should also be. So, its suggested pronunciation is [ˈmɛdikɔ].
- Likewise, 'escritoræs' [eskɾiˈtoɾɛs] should be paroxitone, because 'escritoras' [eskɾiˈtoɾas] and 'escritores' [eskɾiˈtoɾis] or [eskɾiˈtoɾes] are too.
The phoneme ɔ is between the a characterist of feminine nouns and the o characteristic of masculine nouns in the scale of vowel height, which can be characterized symbolic of gender inclusion. Analogously, the "gender-inclusive" ɛ is intermediate step between the "feminine" [a] and the "masculine" e.
Political use
Some politicians have begun to avoid perceived sexism in their speeches; the Mexican president Vicente Fox Quesada, for example, was famous for repeating gendered nouns in their masculine and feminine versions (ciudadanos y ciudadanas). This way of speaking is subject to parodies where new words with the opposite ending are created for the sole purpose of contrasting with the gendered word traditionally used for the common case (like *felizas and *especialistos in *felices y felizas or *las y los especialistas y especialistos).Minoritarian West Iberian languages
Speakers of some minoritarian West Iberian languagesWest Iberian languages
West Iberian is a branch of the Romance languages which includes Castilian, Ladino, the Astur-Leonese group , and the modern descendants of Galician-Portuguese...
can also use expressions with at-sign (biólog@ in Galician
Galician-Portuguese
Galician-Portuguese or Old Portuguese was a West Iberian Romance language spoken in the Middle Ages, in the northwest area of the Iberian Peninsula. It was first spoken in the area bounded in the north and west by the Atlantic Ocean and the Douro River in the south but it was later extended south...
), ligature æ
Æ
Æ is a grapheme formed from the letters a and e. Originally a ligature representing a Latin diphthong, it has been promoted to the full status of a letter in the alphabets of some languages, including Danish, Faroese, Norwegian and Icelandic...
(outoræs in Mirandese language and autor/a in Aragonese language
Aragonese language
Aragonese is a Romance language now spoken in a number of local varieties by between 10,000 and 30,000 people over the valleys of the Aragón River, Sobrarbe and Ribagorza in Aragon, Spain...
).
See also
- Gender-neutral languageGender-neutral languageGender-neutral language, gender-inclusive language, inclusive language, or gender neutrality is linguistic prescriptivism that aims to eliminate reference to gender in terms that describe people...
- Gender-neutrality in languages with grammatical genderGender-neutrality in languages with grammatical genderGender neutrality in languages with grammatical gender implies promoting language usage which is balanced in its treatment of the genders. For example, advocates of gender-neutral language challenge the traditional use of masculine nouns and pronouns when referring to both genders or to a person...
- Differences between Spanish and PortugueseDifferences between Spanish and PortugueseAlthough Portuguese and Spanish are closely related, to the point of having a considerable degree of mutual intelligibility, there are also important differences between them, which can pose difficulties for people acquainted with one of the languages who attempt to learn the other...
- Grammatical gender in SpanishGrammatical gender in SpanishEvery noun in Spanish is considered to have either masculine or feminine gender for grammatical purposes. Many Spanish adjectives and determiners alter their form to agree in gender with the noun that they modify, and likewise many pronouns show gender agreement with their antecedent nouns...
- Political correctnessPolitical correctnessPolitical correctness is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts,...