By SK Nag
Which language is truly gender-neutral? A tricky question in the current world. The netizen must claim their ‘stay-woke’ status by knowing that the globe is moving towards gender-neutral language use. But unfortunately, many of us never put a thought into this. Being ahead of the world, the French raised this question recently to formulate a new lexicon to include unisex alternatives to make their language of love truly genderless without any sexual prejudice.
Indians inherit many scheduled and unscheduled languages from our ancient tradition and culture without knowing correctly if there is some genuinely gender-neutral language. But Bengali, yes, does not separately identify female or male Gender in the grammar. Pandit Ishwar Chandra Bidyasagar, Rabindranath Tagore, Bankim Chandra, Sharat Chandra, Bibhutibhusan, and many other famous Bengali writers have historically made this language richer with their quality contribution.
Therefore, it is not essentially required to recognize Gender to understand the underlying meaning. But Hindi, on the contrary, uses too many gender-specific grammatical chords, which one must know before trying to excel and achieve good Hindi speaking or writing skill. Though colloquial Hindi, excepting some geographical areas, does not speak using too much gender-biased grammar. However, it is a highly gendered-specific and conservative language. There are very few other languages in India which do not need any special attention to become gender-neutral. Therefore, challenges will be for them in the new age world where gender-neutral language will be a hot subject, including on social media.
The world has 256 written languages across the globe, and there are many more spoken but do not have any script. Out of these 256 languages, 112 are gendered, whereas around 144 are genderless. The actual population is not estimated, but the number of languages on either side is almost the same. So the world may be considered to be divided 50:50 between this Gender and non-gendered language use.
The Russian, the German language, recognize three genders (masculine, feminine, & neuter) in their grammar distinctly, whereas Hungarian, Estonian, and Finnish are genderless languages. In Asia, the Chinese language is genderless predominantly. Still, the Korean language does not have a strong gender bias but cannot be termed as pure genderless as they have few exceptions. In Arabic, too, they have two identifiable genders in their language grammar.
Then what are the more genderless friendly languages that are traditionally existing? It isn’t easy to find out across the globe if there is any language that can survive the challenge of language modernization.
The basic necessity of neutral language of grammar is that it does not prefer any gender and avoids particular overpowering sex in their conversation and articulation. Therefore, the need for this language is growing to manifest and echo the demand for equality across the corner. The French language is now adding new words to make their language genderless to become contemporary. However, others will follow suit soon as the world goes forward. Gender-neutral language promotes plurality instead of singular pronouns, and sometimes pronouns are replaced with articles. Using gender-specific terms is also recommended to avoid while upholding gender neutrality.
By and large, the following are some of the Gender neutral languages.
Bengali, Persian, Zemiaki, Central Kurdish (Sorani Dialect), modern Turkic languages (Turkish) and Kartvelian languages (including Georgian), Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and most Austronesian languages (Polynesian languages), Swahili (Bantu language spoken in many parts of Africa).
The common genders are often referred to as the Third Gender, which is incorrect too. If that is so, then who is the first Gender. Therefore, society takes cues from language to orient ourselves to (subtly) dictate the dominance of males over females over transgender. Language influences public attitudes towards gender asymmetry. Cognitive scientists suggest this should change to liberalize society at large. Researchers are still studying the impact of gendered vs. genderless language on society. The women’s representation in the decision-making process dictates that genderless are more active in such scenarios.
Research has unfolded that the languages are classified based on three parameters. Language structure, policy, and individual language behavior directly play a role in deciding the GFL influence during use. The more gender freeness in the language behavior has a strong connection with the inherent social liberalized views of the society they belong to.
Languages are three types: Grammatical gender language, Natural gender language & Genderless language. German, French & Czech fall in the first category, where every noun has grammatical Gender. English & Swedish, on the other hand, come under the second category. In this category, personal nouns tend to be Gender neutral (like neighbor), and Finnish, Turkish come under the third category, where neither personal nouns nor pronouns indicate Gender. So grammatically gendered languages are found to have more visible gender asymmetry than the other two. More masculine forms in general use, therefore, reflect that the society tacitly implies the social status of Men over Women.
This interrelation of language with social hierarchy is visible in all languages. Languages are processed through organic evolution, and modern GFL activism is trying to remove the asymmetry gradually. Because language dictates how we think? When something is explained in a gendered language, the personification imagery happens in our minds automatically. Like a nurse always maps our mind to perceive a female character, whereas a Policeman pops out a male body. So language has far-reaching subconscious effects.
The gender-fair language aims at reducing male bias and discrimination by going beyond stereotypes and traditional social settings. Two distinctly different strategies are referred to attain Symmetricity: Feminization & neutralization. Making famine form visible is the key to the first strategy, like highlighting She or He. Masculine forms are subdued using gender unmarked forms in neutralization strategies, such as police officials.
How the globe is reacting to this change is evident from the Swedish recent frequent use of the gender-neutral pronouns’ hen’. Use of Mx started gaining popularity instead of Mr/ Mrs/ Miss/ Ms or use of partner/ siblings/ child/ parents/spouse /pibling in the USA conversation. Latinx, instead of Latino or Latina already finding a place in the so-called standard address. Cricket batsman became batter since women’s cricket started gaining popularity. Therefore, soon ‘they’ will replace ‘he’ or ‘she,’ and the use of “They is” will gain popularity over ‘They are.’
It is not far when the language that the globe will speak popularly, shall have no gender bias. The traditional art of articulation with default male gender bias will soon disappear, and a new style of using non-gender-specific nouns and pronouns shall be in use. Some are already in predominant use like ‘Chair,’ ‘Chairperson,’ ‘Police officer,’ etc. These uses will increase to make the language more affluent and more human-friendly. So the address predominantly becomes “my dear friends, colleagues, guests or delegates” instead of “Ladies & Gentlemen” or “Dear sir/madam” to exhibit a more egalitarian belief in the speech without objectifying the Gender.
So breaking language bias is inevitable in the coming days.
(Author is Political & Economic Analyst. The views expressed are personal opinion of the author. He can be reached at saibal.iim@gmail.com)
