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Neologisms such as iel, ille, ul, ol and yul have emerged in recent years as gender-neutral alternatives to the masculine and feminine pronouns, but are not yet considered standard in French [2] despite their use in some speech communities. [3] Iel (plural iels) is the most widely-known and used gender-neutral pronoun. [citation needed]
This is a key difference from English: in English, possessive pronouns are inflected to indicate the gender and number of their antecedent — e.g., in "the tables are his", the form "his" indicates that the antecedent (the possessor) is masculine singular, whereas in the French les tables sont les siennes, "siennes" or its base form "sien ...
LGBT+ rights advocates and feminists have argued in favour of the pronoun's use, arguing that it makes the language more inclusive and less sexist. [15] [16] [17] Some advocates have also raised concerns that lack of gender neutral options in French might force non-binary people to turn towards languages that do have more prominent gender neutral options instead, notably the English language.
Ella is a personal name most often used as a feminine given name, but also as a surname, especially in Australia. In Greek mythology, Ella (Greek: Ἕλλα) was the daughter of Athamas and Nephele. [1]
Note: The Slavic languages marked with an asterisk (*) were traditionally recognised as having masculine, feminine and neuter genders only, with animacy as a separate category for the masculine and feminine (in East Slavic languages) or masculine only (elsewhere). Other. Ket [11] Khoekhoe ; Telugu ; Teso (Nilo-Saharan)
Some (very rare) nouns change gender according to the way they are used: the words amour 'love' and délice 'pleasure' are masculine in singular and feminine in plural; the word orgue 'organ' is masculine, but when used emphatically in plural to refer to a church organ it becomes feminine (les grandes orgues); the plural noun gens 'people ...
This leads to sentences such as (5a) in English, and (6a) in French. Example of gender-neutral masculine: English (5) a. If anybody comes, tell him. masculine him used to refer to a person of unknown sex b. *If anybody comes, tell her. feminine her is not used to refer to a person of unknown sex Example of collective masculine: French (6) a.
A very small number of nouns in some languages can be either masculine or feminine. [53] [54] When referring to these mixed-gender nouns, a decision has to be made, based on factors such as meaning, dialect or sometimes even personal preference, whether to use a masculine or feminine pronoun. There are no neutral or mixed-gender singular third ...