Heng Ding
In my process of acquiring French, one of the most difficult things I find is trying to remember masculine or feminine French words. Like many other languages, French is gendered: pronouns, verbs, nouns and adjectives reflect the gender of the object or the person they refer to.
In French, there is not a word like “they” that is gender neutral. Most critically, the masculine is always given priority over the feminine. For instance, a French speaker would still use the masculine plural, ils, to refer to a group that consists of even 1 man and 10 women (although some people mentioned that it has changed a bit, still that’s how we learned in the francisation course here in Quebec). However, although in the past some words that have only masculine lexemes, such as “professeur” (teacher) and “avocat” (lawyer), are additionally preceded by “femme” if one wants to refer to a woman, now things are changed. For example, under the new rules, professions such as doctors, teachers and professors will now have female-only names in the official dictionary published by the Académie Française. For example, the term “doctor” is currently used for both men and women, while the word “doctor” will be added to the feminine suffix and become “docteur. However, the French Academy, which has an overwhelmingly male membership, has fiercely opposed the feminization of professional titles, saying it would bring “exponential complexity” and even “fatal disaster” to the French language.
Not only French, but my mother language, Chinese, also contains many sexist words that discriminate women group. For example, there is a famous Chinese saying “男人四十一枝花，女人四十豆腐渣”, which means after men reach the age of 40, they will become more attractive and more appreciative while women reach the age of 40, just like tofu dregs, worthless and no nutrition, will not attract others. This is a very insulting saying and devalues women, but few people would associate it with sexism and most of them just use it without scruples.
Sexist language has been defined as “words, phrases, and expressions that unnecessarily differentiate between women and men or exclude, trivialize, or diminish either gender” (Parks & Roberton, 1998a, p. 455). Most of the sexist languages, from my understanding, are demeaning and discriminatory towards women. Although the status of women has increased dramatically, they are still in a disadvantaged position and are still a vulnerable group.
Language always changes with the social, political, cultural and other developments of the time. Sexism in language needs to be taken seriously and a more neutral approach needs to be thought of. We need to raise women’s awareness through the study of linguistic sexism so that women will not be the victims of linguistic discrimination. Hopefully, we could develop a more gender-inclusive language and encourage people to use it in the future.
The idea of language being gendered is very interesting indeed. As a native speaker of French, I find it intriguing that I don’t even think about which ‘determinant’ to use when speaking and writing. It tends to come naturally to me based on my experience with the language. However, I grew up watching my friends struggle in our French grammar classes because they couldn’t rely on their repertoires to know which gender certain nouns belong to. I’m wondering what educators can do to teach this skill? Can it even be taught? Or does gender in language have to simply be memorized?
Alison D.
Hi Heng,
This topic is really interesting and real. In today’s society, we have been advocating equality between men and women. Through long time’s efforts, some things have been improved, but some things have not been improved, including some prejudices or stereotypes. There is a long way to go. As a French learner, I also have the same problem, how do we remember masculine and feminine? Some of them can be reasoned out logically, but some of them are not regular at all. Which method should we adopt to help us remember is still a problem to be solved
Yi Hu
Hi Heng,
I like the topic you raised in your post and I also hope we could one day develop a more gender-inclusive language. I think in Chinese, we also have many sayings showing the superiority of male status like we use “先生” to praise an outstanding lady who may make a great contribution to the country, but every man is called “先生” in Chinese, which implies that most talented women can be equal to men under this context. This is totally ridiculous. Hope one day we can change this situation and create a more gender-fair society.
Jundong Ma
Hi Heng,
Thanks for your discussion on different perceptions on both genders in Chinese proverb and the masculine/feminine genders of French words. This reminds me of in English there’s he and she (and “they” now), in spoken Chinese he and she are all pronounced as “ta”, does that mean that the sexism in Mandarin is mild?
Chuanmei Lin