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Furthermore, some see evidence of the intentional preference of the masculine over the feminine. It has been argued that 17th-century grammaticians who wanted to assert male dominance worked to suppress the feminine forms of certain professions, leading to the modern-day rule that prefers the masculine over the feminine in the French language. [4]
The feminine counterpart kanojo, on the other hand, is a combination of kano (adnominal (rentaishi) version of ka-) and jo ('woman'), coined for the translation of its Western equivalents. It was not until the Meiji period that kare and kanojo were commonly used as the masculine and feminine pronoun in the same way as their Western equivalents.
Second-language learners are often encouraged to memorize a modifier, usually a definite article, in conjunction with each noun—for example, a learner of French may learn the word for "chair" as la chaise (meaning "the chair"); this carries the information that the noun is chaise, and that it is feminine (because la is the feminine singular ...
Feminine forms of German nouns are usually created by adding -in to the root, which corresponds to the masculine form. For example, the root for secretary is the masculine form Sekretär. Adding the feminine suffix yields Sekretärin ("woman secretary"; plural: Sekretärinnen: "women secretaries").
Many Australian languages have a system of gender superclassing in which membership in one gender can mean membership in another. [15] Worrorra: Masculine, feminine, terrestrial, celestial, and collective. [16] Halegannada: Originally had 9 gender pronouns but only 3 exist in present-day Kannada. Zande: Masculine, feminine, animate, and inanimate.
American feminist critic and writer Elaine Showalter defines this movement as "the inscription of the feminine body and female difference in language and text." [14] Écriture féminine places experience before language, and privileges non-linear, cyclical writing that evades "the discourse that regulates the phallocentric system."
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.
French grammar is the set of rules by which the French language creates statements, questions and commands. In many respects, it is quite similar to that of the other Romance languages . French is a moderately inflected language.