# Change in spelling in regard with men-women egality.



## Yoodje

Hello,

I have a question about what is called in French egalitarian and non-discriminative spelling and orthography.

Well, I think I have to make my point clear, so I'll try a little French grammar lecture (I am not a grammarian so, please, forgive my approximations  ).

French makes a difference between a masculine grammatical gender and a feminine grammatical gender.

A common noun can have a form that tells which is its gender (for instance fermier "he"-farmer and fermière "she"-farmer). But in many cases if you don't know what the noun signifies, you can only know its gender through an article (definite : _le _masculine singular, _la _feminine singular ; undefinite : _un _masculine singular, _une _feminine singular ; for instance LE docteur (the "he"-doctor), LA docteur (the "she"-doctor)).

Moreover, in general, _in a sentence in the plural form_, once there's a masculine gender subject, and even though there are numerous feminine gender subjects along it, the masculine form prevail.
For instance : 
- François est mignon (masculine singular : François is cute).
- Sandrine et Sylvie sont mignonnes (feminine plural : Sandrine and Sylvie are cute). 
- François, Sandrine et Sylvie sont mignons. (plural : François, Sandrine and Sylvie are cute).

Facing different nowadays evolution in men-wmen egality and, also, LGBTQI issues, there's a movement that tries to change ways of writing and spelling. This has various form. 

For instance, instead of writing : "hommes et femmes, nous sommes tous concernés par cela" (plural with masculine taking over on the feminine), people will write "hommes et femmes, nous sommes _tou.te.s_ _concerné.e.s _par cela" or "hommes et femmes, nous sommes_ tou-te-s concerné-e-s_ par cela" which means "men and women, we are all interested in this subject". This way of writing is, at the moment, quite rare and only used in some LGBTQI writings. 

And some noun, though masculine (or, according to a few people, neutral) in their grammatical gender, are used with masculine or feminine.
For instance: academic form "Mme Dupont est le nouveau ministre" (Ms. Dupont is the new minister, masculine form for "ministre" although Ms Dupont is a woman)
Modern form : "Mme Dupont est _la nouvelle ministre_" (Ms. Dupont is the new minister, feminine form)

This way of changing the grammatical gender is nowadays quite usual. 

And at last, my question is : does Hebrew deal with this kind of issues and, if so, how ? 

This is an important question when it comes to translation for egalitarian or LGBTQI texts that are sensitive about this matter.  And that's why I would be interested to know if Hebrew handles also this point.


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## arielipi

Yes, although changing genders in writing is not common (i.e. writing not according to the official rules), the academia does address this, sometimes to ridiculous extents.
for instance, ראש ממשלה rosh memshala is the prime minister, rosh is head and is masculine, but lately the academia passed that if a female is prime minister the title would be ראשת ממשלה roshat memshala which is ridiculous, because the rosh doesnt refer to the worker's gender, it refers to the abstract administrator of the government.


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## Yoodje

Thanks a lot  !

In fact, in France, the French Academy doesn't support the feminisation for grammatical reason I will not make your suffer with ;-) and for the logical reason you stated regarding what is the reference of the noun (the function and not the gender, as far as I remember. Sometimes it also leads to puzzling situation, but in general, it is OK. 

But the way of writing the whole set of possible grammatical agreements cause difficulties in reading. A whole text with things like "nous sommes_ tou-te-s concerné-e-s __par cela" _quickly becomes a nightmare to read. But for the moment writers didn't come out with a better solution.

I am going to look on the Hebrew Academy website if I can find some more information. I didn't think to check there .


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## ystab

Yes, Hebrew also deals with it.

The default gender in Hebrew is masculine. Therefore, addressing a person whose gender is unknown is by default masculine. For example, when setting rules and laws: העובר על החוק צפוי לקנס (masc. sing.). Also, when addressing a group of men and women, one uses the plural masculine form. This phenomenon was considered discriminative toward women, and thus it led to a variety of unformal merged forms, some common and some esoteric.
Examples:
1. אתה - masculine singular you, את - feminine singular you. את/ה - a merger of both.
2. בחר - choose (imperative m. sing.), בחרי - choose (imperative f. sing.). בחר/י - a merger of both.
3. סמן - mark (imperative m. sing.), סמני - mark (imperative f. sing.). סמן/י or סמן/ני - a merger of both.
More esoteric, more common in feminist and LGBT circles:
4. אנשים - people (men), נשים - women. א/נשים - a merger of bothץ
5. חברים - friends (m.), חברות - friends (f.). חברימות - a merger of both

An anecdote: Member of Knesset Merav Michaeli uses the feminine gender as default in her speech.


Throughout the years, some plural feminine verb forms have been abandoned in favor of plural masculine, to the extent that the plural masculine is regarded as the only plural form. This led to the usage of plural language when speaking generally. For example, in the Hebrew Wikipedia, the section of "See Also" is translated as ראו גם (in the plural form), so it could apply to both genders.


Regarding the Hebrew Academy, they find the merger usage confusing, and prefer addressing in the default masculine form, or in the plural form.
http://hebrew-academy.org.il/2010/03/25/פנייה-המיועדת-לגבר-וגם-לאישה/
http://hebrew-academy.org.il/2010/10/04/איך-פונים-לקבוצה-שרובה-נשים/


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## Yoodje

Thank you Ystab for all the explanations and the links . All are very useful !!


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## hadronic

Do the various feminist or egalitarian movements in Israel try to revivify the femine plural forms in the future ?
הן יכתובנה instead of הן יכתבו


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## Drink

hadronic said:


> Do the various feminist or egalitarian movements in Israel try to revivify the femine plural forms in the future ?
> הן יכתובנה instead of הן יכתבו



I think your Arabic is interfering here. The correct form in Hebrew is הן *ת*כתובנה.


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## hadronic

Yeah, I always get confused on this one 
There's no place for logic here, I know ... :/


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## Drink

hadronic said:


> Yeah, I always get confused on this one
> There's no place for logic here, I know ... :/



It's logical either way:
הוא *י*כתוב > הם *י*כתבו
היא *ת*כתוב > הן *ת*כתובנה


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## refiZ

There is a similar thing in Spanish, using the @ character since it holds the masculine 'o' and feminine 'a'.

So for example:

'todos' + 'todas' = tod@s
'nosotros' + 'nosotras' = nosot@s
'queridos' + 'queridas' = querid@s

I see it more as a nice coincide of the letters.

Written Hebrew actually works well for this in some cases. For example, the second-person past tense is spelled the same way, even though it is pronounced different (דיברת can be said 'dibart' or 'dibarta'). Same with the possessive ('ידייך' can be said 'yadaich' or yadecha'). Also, for verbs that end with 'ה', there is a similar behavior. I know the Hebrew speakers all know this -- I was just pointing it out to the French guest. By the way... do you plan to have a native speaker translate for you?...


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## hadronic

I think I'd write ידיך yadécha vs.  ידייך yadáyich, but dunno if it's only me


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## Yoodje

@ReFiz : thanks for your answer. I would translate by myself from Hebrew into French. But the other way, I'd need a native Hebrew speaker .


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## Drink

hadronic said:


> I think I'd write ידיך yadécha vs.  ידייך yadáyich, but dunno if it's only me



Yes, I agree. But yadayich can also be written as ידיך, while yadecha cannot be written as ידייך.


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## arielipi

hadronic said:


> I think I'd write ידיך yadécha vs.  ידייך yadáyich, but dunno if it's only me


+1 hadronic!


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## refiZ

Oops! Thanks for the correction -- I am learning too. I guess my sense of "That looks right" is still evolving for Hebrew.


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