“Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey,” argued linguist Roman Jakobson. This hypothesis was popular in the 1940s, but it was deemed incorrect by the linguistic community in the 60s and 70s. Linguistic determinism is the strong flavor of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis-the idea that your language influences how you think. Proponents of linguistic determinism argue that your language determines and constrains what you’re capable of thinking. But at least one major school of linguistic thought concludes that language and perception are intimately related. Many linguists I spoke to stressed that changing a language doesn’t guarantee a change in perception this leads some of them to say that inclusive writing just isn’t worth the trouble. These and other recommendations have collectively become known as “inclusive writing.” Some have even recommended creating a gender-neutral pronoun (the equivalent of how “they” is sometimes used in English, or “ hen” in Sweden). s, which would read as “male musicians and female musicians”).Many also recommend a grammatical tool that consists of adding a “median-period” at the end of masculine nouns, followed by the feminine ending, thus indicating both gendered versions of every noun (like musicien
#To whom it may concern in french professional#
Most recommend creating feminine versions of all professional nouns and/or using neutral nouns whenever possible.
#To whom it may concern in french full#
What’s more, French students are taught that “the masculine dominates over the feminine,” meaning that if you have a room full of ten women and just one man, you have to describe the whole group in the masculine.įeminists who believe that these features of the French language put women at a disadvantage disagree about how best to remedy them. So, a male minister is le ministre and a female minister is la ministre.
![to whom it may concern in french to whom it may concern in french](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/e1df4a52-3264-4a6b-a751-4610e313bba3-151221185136/95/to-whom-it-may-concern-1-638.jpg)
And there are many nouns (including those referring to professions) that don’t have feminine versions. The language has no neutral grammatical gender. So, le policier is a policeman la policière is a policewoman. In French, pronouns, nouns, and adjectives reflect the gender of the object to which they refer. Clearly in the second camp, the office of Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced this week that it’s banning the use of gender-neutral French in all official government documents. They complained that implementing it would badly complicate education, and that there’s not enough evidence that changing a language can really change social realities. Educating the next generation in a gender-inclusive way, they claimed, would yield concrete positive changes, like professional environments that are more welcoming to women.
![to whom it may concern in french to whom it may concern in french](https://cvwm.images.cloud.veterans.gc.ca/2726319_5.jpg)
![to whom it may concern in french to whom it may concern in french](https://images.sumry.me/storage/images/cd7ab5a449e970eb8682c93d909d6fc3.png)
It was a victory for a subset of French feminists who had argued that the gendered nature of the language promotes sexist outcomes, and that shifting to a gender-neutral version would improve women’s status in society. So the uproar was almost instantaneous when, this fall, the first-ever school textbook promoting a gender-neutral version of French was released. That’s why any attempt at changing the language is often met with suspicion. “My homeland is the French language,” author Albert Camus once wrote-and many French people would agree.