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Macron opposes gender-inclusive spelling as he inaugurates language museum (www.france24.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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French President Emmanuel Macron looked to cement his legacy, and take on political opponents, with the inauguration on Monday of a monument to the French language deep in far-right heartland.

Macron used the occasion to wade into a culture war debate, backing a right-wing bill to ban the use of "inclusive language" -- a popular trend for using both masculine and feminine versions of words when writing.

France must "not give in to fashionable trends," he said as he inaugurated the Cite Internationale de la Langue Francaise just hours before the Senate was due to debate the proposed law.

Modern French presidents love a cultural "grand projet" -- an imposing monument to "scratch" their name on history, as ex-leader Francois Mitterrand put it in the 1980s.

Mitterrand was an avid and controversial legacy-builder, transforming the Louvre museum with a glass pyramid, and erecting the vast Opera Bastille and National Library.

Georges Pompidou built a famous modern art museum in Paris, and Jacques Chirac created the Quai Branly global culture museum on the banks of the Seine.

The practice fell out of fashion this century, but has been revived by Macron, who was already eyeing up a crumbling chateau in the small town of Villers-Cotterets while still a presidential candidate in 2017.

He has overseen the renovation of the Renaissance castle, completed in 1539 under King Francois I, and its transformation into an international centre for the French language.

It hopes to attract 200,000 visitors a year to its large library (replete with AI-supported suggestion engine), interactive exhibits and cultural events.

Perhaps fittingly, the website seems determinedly uninterested in the quality of its English translations, describing the castle as a "high place of the French history and architecture".

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Right wingers are so fucking dumb

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Tribalists are even worse.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Is this like Americans using Latinx? Cause that shit's dumb af and infuriates Spanish-speaking Americans on the daily.

I'm very left-leaning but I'm absolutely conservative when it comes to changing your language just to appease people that don't even speak it

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Very different. In French, you often simply need to add a letter or two at the end of a male-gendered word to make it female-gendered. A lot of our media simply does something like "word(e)", with the contents of the parenthesis being the additional letters to make a word female-gendered. That way, you can avoid typing mostly the same word twice.

We've been doing this for decades, and is absolutely not a new "woke trend" or whatever bullshit Macron seems to believe it is.

"Latinx" was a stupid trend by white Americans to try and bastardized how a language works.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

"Language museum," sounds like some shit Quebec would make

Edit: lol offended Quebecaggot.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago

Etymology is fascinating and your lack of imagination as to why is preventing you from enjoying (or letting people enjoy) things.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

The very word "Language" comes from the French for "tongue". About a third of the words you use in everyday speech are French. You'd have to be a bit of an ignoramus to not find that interesting

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (5 children)

Just curious: how do they manage with their spelling and their phonetics to achieve gender neutrality?

In the article they refer to just

a popular trend for using both masculine and feminine versions of words when writing

which would be as common sense as every speach beginning with the "ladies and gentlemen" clause. Are they going to remove the "ladies" part because it's redundant?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (3 children)

The issue, I’d assume, is that you end up replacing generic masculine words with two words. ‘Dear bakers and female-bakers’ for example. When the more logical approach is to simply turn the generic masculine into the generic it’s being used as anyway. In English, for example, a fireman or policeman does not need to be male, and it suffices to say ‘he is a fireman, she is a fireman’.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago (3 children)

When the more logical approach is to simply turn the generic masculine into the generic it’s being used as anyway.

That's still causing the issue of "man as the default," now it's just "we consider women men too." The more logical way would be to use language akin to "firefighter," "officer," or "pig," all naturally neutral words.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Latin derived languages can't simply use "words like officer, firefighter" to solve the problem because all nouns are gendered, including those not related to living beings at all. You could create a gender-neutral title, but it would still be masculine or feminine in a sentence.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, well, “they” was exclusively a plural pronoun in English until some people started using it in the singular as a gender-neutral pronoun, and everyone eventually got over it. Well, most everyone.

Languages evolve. I realize this example isn’t as complicated as what is required for using gender-inclusive language in a romance language, but my point remains valid.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

"They" as a gender neutral singular pronoun is not a new phenomenon.

But you're still not understanding my point - I'm not saying people can't adapt or that language never changes. I'm talking about how the entire grammatical structure of a sentence in Latin languages will force a gender - there's no way to avoid it. You'd have to modify pretty much all classes of words in order to achieve gender neutrality (apart from masculine neutral) and even then, it would have some irregular ambiguities. This type of change doesn't happen - you can't wave your prescriptivism wand and suddenly make everyone change 80% of the words on their vocabulary.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Different language, but I've seen some interesting experimental Latine gender neutral verbage. Instead of a/o they just use e.

It definitely requires a fundamental change to language, though, and I don't know if it can ever take off. Maybe as its own dialect?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It absolutely can be integrated into the language, it will just sound "weird" for a bit, as it's taking advantage of an underused, but already existing, part of the language.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

You're right, it can happen but I think it would require some central authority to decree that the language is now gender neutral and then use it exclusively in schools and public communication. Changing a language is hard.

EDIT Oh boo hoo you fuckin liberals, you don't want to admit that we need central control of fucking anything and want to pretend language will just magically get better on its own.

We're still struggling with slurs and that's just a few words used in a few contexts. You fucking think you can restructure grammatical gender without state intervention? Grow up.

At the very least it would require all the state schools and publications changing, if not forcing it onto mass media on general.

That's what we need. Stop being cowards.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is not true, as Latin itself carries a neuter form for nouns. Sure, you'd have to gender of the noun, but it has existed for literally 2000 years.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Latin itself carried a neutral form for nouns. It was abandoned and absorbed into the masculine form, which is now the "neutral" form.

This happened centuries ago - and is also why every modern Latin based language follows the same pattern.

Using the masculine form as a neutral form is quite literally the entire point being debated here.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Well if one of the forms is going to become the neutral, how about making the feminine form the default neutral instead, eh?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I have nothing against that. I also have nothing against gender neutrality in language. In fact, I wish Latin never lost its gender neutrality in the first place.

I was just explaining why it doesn't magically work with romantic languages like it does with English - we can't just say "police officer" and "singular they" and go be happy.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I was just explaining why it doesn’t magically work with romantic languages like it does with English - we can’t just say “police officer” and “singular they” and go be happy.

Sure we can. I'd posit the people who aren't happy with the quite reasonable compromise that naturally occurs are the problematic ones. Fireman is a gender neutral.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Really?

Why is it man is the default and not human? 'Man' exists in both 'man, woman, and human.' Why even assume the default is male when talking about a fireman? (aside from the fact firemen have historically been male)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Another option is like in German where you invent some sort of new suffix like "*in". For example, Lehrer (m), Lerhrerin (w), Lehrer*in (m/w/d). Prounounced as a sort of shorter than space silence.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's a terrible solution, there's no pronouns and articles that could refer back to that kind of construct ("The teachers who went to the bridge met their students there"), and don't get me started on cases or adjective agreement.

If you don't want to use generic feminine/masculine forms (Like "Die Person löste ein Bahnticket", "Der Bäcker buk ein Brot") there's the Inklusivum, which is nothing but a whole new fourth grammatical gender: Animated but sex-neutral.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Inklusivum

Wow this is bullshit. Who's gonna learn a whole new grammar for their mother tongue? And "de gute Arzte" still sounds masculine to me. There's nothing wrong with generic masculine in my opinion, it's efficient and everyone speaks it. But I'm a man, so my opinion is invalid anyway.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Who’s gonna learn a whole new grammar for their mother tongue?

It's not a new grammar it's a new gender and the difference to what we have isn't larger than German inter-dialectal difference. It's a linguistically sane alternative to Binnen-I and Sternchen and everything.

As in: If there was a dialect around without male/female distinction that used the Inklusivum instead you'd hardly blink. You'd be able to make sense of it (at least more than I can make sense of Bavarian) and with some exposure, you would be able to speak it without studying.

You could also learn Platt which pretty much has lost the female/male distinction everywhere but in pronouns just like English (but retains the neuter), but I guarantee you that'd be harder.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I think you're exactly right on that. All the opposition to change is in favor of keeping language as efficient as possible. The smoothest way to get everyone on board with neutral language is to use a term that's both familiar and efficient. If our generic words are masculine, then we can just redefine them as neutral. Some claim this means "women are now men" but long-term it really means "old generic word no longer applies to only men"

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (3 children)

No.

The French have started using new typographic conventions to turn nouns and adjectives neutral, or at least dual-gendered. French is a deeply gendered language by default, so for instance the word for author is "auteur" if the author is male and "autrice" if the author is female. If unknown, then... The author is assumed male.

This is of course not great, and so the French people have started using constructions like "auteur.ice" or somesuch in order to include both options in the word. This approach appears to have become reasonably popular.

The French right wing is EXTREMELY upset about this and is seeking to get it outright banned (they may already have succeeded actually).

As far as I understand this museum is the brainchild of the fascist party RN and is entirely about the French language as the right wing thinks it should be spoken, as opposed to how it actually is. So, just yet another instance of taxpayer-funded reactionary crap.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Without knowing much, I feel like it runs into the same problem as Latinx. It is unintuitive to speak the words how they are written. The specific auteur.ice example seems relatively easy to actually speak, but I'm sure other words run into the same problems.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Latinx is a word invented by white Americans to describe people from Latin America. But this is about French people using their own language in a new way.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

No latinx is also a language reform movement in Latin America which targets spoken and written Spanish.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

People who know better use "latine." latinx is strictly (white) people on the internet who want to be divisive and use a society's natural inclusivity as a cudgel for their own ends.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

Really?

I guess it depends on what you consider to be a 'movement.'

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

The French have started using new typographic conventions

We've been doing the whole "auteur(ice)" thing for decades already. It's not new. For as long as I can remember, every technical/educational book I've ever read in school did this.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yikes.

Talk about a slippery slope.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

Create new words. For example il (he) and elle (she) become iel.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Instead of saying motivés/motivées for masculine and feminine

motivé·e·s

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

"Inclusive" writing involves writing both masculine and feminine forms of words, separated by dots -- for example "francais.e.s".

The proposed law being debated by the Senate later Monday would ban such phrasing in education and all official texts, from work contracts to court documents to instruction manuals.

Macron appeared supportive, saying: "In this language, the neutral form is provided by the masculine. We don't need to add dots in the middle of words to make it better understood."

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is the country that gave us existential and post-structural philosophy. What kind of culture war bullshit is going down in France right now?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The result of having a strong presence of US media in their everyday lives

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago

That would be really pathetic if it was true instead of bullshit.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

Macron is a clown and his opinions on language don't matter.

With that out of the way, grammatical gender in French is a really complex topic.

"Inclusive" language is centuries old through the usage of parenthesis or slashes. Somewhat recently, attempts have been made to codify this practice using a new syntax (auteur·ice), which conservatives aren't on board with (either because they don't want change, or because they can pretend it's a new cultural import from the US and wage some invented culture war).
Progressives aren't universally on board either. The new syntax is quite clunky, doesn't translate to spoken speech, is quite inaccessible to dyslexic people, and completely exclusive of genders outside the binary.

This is all complicated by the fact that French is a very rigid language whose rules are practically set by the "French Academy" (which is a whole other can of conservative worms) which unfortunately gives old curmudgeons immense power to strike down any evolution of the language as "officially improper". Imagine if the Oxford Style Guide or whatever was uniformly taught throughout the English speaking world, and from Mumbai to London to Auckland any step away from these rules at school would get you points deducted, and all administrations were forced by law to follow these rules. Then imagine that it'd been that way for longer than anyone's been alive. That's the world the French live in, and the very concept of written language being "alive" is fundamentally something most people either disagree with outright or at least look at with suspicion or a vague look of incomprehension.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The Anglosphere solidarity The French left.

"Tables don't have genders, you dumbasses."

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

Also literally everyone who speaks a "gendered" language. Fireman isn't gendered term you dumbass.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Why would french embrace american stupidity?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago

It's a fad that will pass with time.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 10 months ago

Whole Europe does unfortunately