Historical note Ancient Greek and
Classical Latin had generic words for "human"/"humanity in general" or "human being"— () (grammatically masculine or feminine) and (grammatically masculine) respectively—which are the
etyma of such modern terms as "
anthropology" or . For "male human as opposed to female human", there existed the separate words () and (the
etyma of English "androgen" and "virile", respectively). Note Ancient Greek is not a Romance language but the many borrowings we see demonstrates a good contrast with the Latin. Some modern derivatives of the Latin noun , however, such as French , Italian , Portuguese , and Spanish , have acquired a predominantly male denotation, although they are sometimes still used generically, notably in
high registers. For example, French for an
anthropology museum exhibiting human culture, is not specifically "male culture". This
semantic shift was parallel to the evolution of the word "man" in English. Spanish , Portuguese and French are used to say "human being". In
Romanian, however, the cognate retains its original meaning of "any human person", as opposed to the gender-specific words for "man" and "woman" ( and , respectively). In
Romansh the word only refers to a male, whereas "human being" is expressed in different ways in the different dialects: or .
Scientific Latin In
binomial nomenclature, Latin species names are typically either masculine or feminine, often ending in the
-i suffix for masculine names and the
-ae suffix for feminine names. In 2021, the species
Strumigenys ayersthey was named with the suffix
-they (derived from the English
singular they pronoun) to create the first gender-neutral Latin binomial name. It was named to honor the
non-binary community.
Contemporary Latin The Lupercal group of Latinists, seeing how Latin by Classical grammar rules uses grammatical masculine for mixed groups and for generic titles, have decided as their house style to expand Latin grammar so as to be gender-inclusive: • For nouns and adjectives in the 1st and 2nd declension, a 5th declension third variant is created:
amicus (masculine),
amica (feminine),
amices (new neuter) • Word pairs with different roots get exchanged with the neuter option: instead of
vir (man) or
mulier (woman),
homo (human) is to be preferred. For the terms "sibling" and "grandparent", as there was no third word,
consanguinees (same-bloodied) and
proparens (great-parent) are coined • The -tor/-trix suffix is given a third option -tres (fifth declension):
locutor (a male speaker),
locutrix (a female speaker),
locutres (a speaker) This is, however, a house style of theirs that is not necessarily followed by other modern Latinist groups.
Spanish Pride in 2023 In
Spanish, nouns, pronouns, articles, and adjectives are marked as masculine or feminine. The feminine is often marked with the suffix , while masculine is often marked with
-o (e.g., 'male surgeon' and 'female surgeon'); however, there are many exceptions often caused by the
etymology of the word ( 'the hand' is feminine and 'the day' is masculine). As in other
Romance languages, it is traditional to use the masculine form of nouns and pronouns when referring to males and females collectively. Advocates of gender-neutral language modification consider this to be
sexist and favor new ways of writing and speaking. Two methods have begun to come into use. One of them is to use the
at-sign (@) or the letter
x to replace or , especially in radical political writing ( or ), but use of the slash (/) as in ( or ) is more common. The
ligature æ can be used in the same way ( for writers of two genders, although is more common). Typically these forms are pronounced with an ending [e]. They are also commonly seen simply spelled as
-e. There have also been attempts to reword sentences via
periphrasis in such way that gendered words referring to people are not used, such as using
la persona refugiada 'the refugee person' instead of
el refugiado 'the [male] refugee'. There are also attempts of using more gender-neutral nouns such as
la pareja 'the pair/couple' in place of
los novios 'lit: the boyfriends'. Even the term 'non-binary' is gendered in Spanish,
no binario [masculine] and
no binaria [feminine]. Some politicians have adopted gender-neutral language to avoid perceived sexism in their speeches; for example, the Mexican president
Vicente Fox Quesada was famous for repeating gendered nouns in both their masculine and feminine versions (). This way of speaking is subject to parodies where new words with the opposite ending are created for the sole purpose of contrasting with the gendered word traditionally used for the common case (like * instead of ). There are other grammatical work-arounds, such as using the imperative or impersonal form when speaking, these allow the speaker to avoid using gendered nouns and pronouns for more formal and gender neutral ways of addressing. The increase in popularity in evolving the Spanish language to be more gender-neutral has come with mixed reception. Particularly the methods of changing the endings of nouns and pronouns seem to be the most controversial as they aim to change the rules of the Spanish language. In 2022,
Buenos Aires, the capital of
Argentina, gained attention when they banned the use of 'inclusive language' such as -e, -x, and -@ endings in up to secondary education.
French To make words or phrases gender-inclusive, French-speakers use two methods. •
Orthographic solutions strive to include both the masculine and feminine endings in the word. Examples include hyphens (),
middle dots (), parentheses (), or capital letters (). The parentheses method is now often considered sexist, because parentheses are used to show something less important. Most writers avoid this practice in official titles such as
Governor General and favor the next process. • A
hendiadys is a phrase that contains two complementary words, and a gender-neutral hendiadys will include a feminine word and a masculine word, e.g. , . Within France, this gender-inclusive language has been met with some harsh resistance from the
Académie Française and French
conservatives. For example, in 2017, Prime Minister
Édouard Philippe called for the banning of inclusive language in official documents because it purportedly violated French grammar. Additionally, the Académie Française does not support the inclusive
feminine forms of traditionally masculine job titles, stating their position on their website: In contrast to linguistic traditionalism in France, the use of feminine job titles is more widely accepted in the larger
Francophonie. The use of non-gendered job titles in
French is common and generally standard practice among the
francophones in
Belgium and in
Canada. By law in
Quebec, the use of gender-inclusive job titles is obligatory if the writer has not opted for gender-free terms. Although some long-established positions of high prestige, such
Governor General of Canada exist in both masculine and feminine variants, honorary titles remain masculine throughout the Francophonie even when the award or honor is bestowed unto a woman. Examples are titles such as , , , , , used in the
Order of Canada, the
National Order of Quebec, France's
Legion of Honor and the Académie Française, or Belgium's and
Monaco's
Order of the Crown. The most common way of feminizing job titles in French is by adding a feminine
suffix to the masculine version of the noun, most commonly (, ), (, ), (, ), (, ), (, ). For job titles ending in
epicene suffixes such as () or (), the only change is in the article () and any associated adjectives. Abbreviated professions only change the article as well (). In some cases, words already had a feminine form which was rarely used, and a new one was created. For instance had the feminine but was still created. had the feminine (typically used only of the goddess Artemis) but was still created. Nowadays both feminine forms can be encountered, with the old ones being generally more prevalent in Europe and the new ones in Québec. Words that formerly referred solely to a dignitary's wife () are now used to refer to a woman holding the same dignitary position. Although marriage titles have mainly dropped out of use, many cite the possible confusion as a reason for continuing to use those such as or . For this reason, the traditional use remains the most frequent in France. Nonetheless, in France, the husband of a female ambassador would never be known as . Instead, he would be called literally "the ambassador's husband", . The title has been rejected in public writing by the
French government since December 2012, in favour of for all adult women, without respect to
civil status.
Non-binary French-speakers in Canada have coined a gender-neutral 3rd person pronoun as an alternative to the masculine or feminine . was also added to Le Petit Robert in November 2021.
Portuguese Brazilian In practice, the proposal is to use E as a nominal ending for words that admit gender inflection (e.g.,
Ariel é muito esperte, "Ariel is very smart"). However, there are other proposals other than with neologisms, and this myriad of concepts carry
polyphony. The letter "x", such as in "todxs" was also used, including in
Braille. The first-person
possessive pronoun, in contrast to masculine 'meu' and feminine 'minha,' is 'minhe' in neutral form (e.g.
Ariel é minhe namorade, "Ariel is my partner"). For third-person personal pronouns (where the masculine is 'ele' and the feminine is 'ela'), the most recognized options are '
elu' among others, the usage depends on the user's preference.
Brazilian Portuguese is strongly regionalized, so gender neutral language does vary from state to state. For example, the gender neutral language from the
São Paulo community is different compared to gender neutral language from the
Rio Branco. Also, due to Brazil's
conservative society and
reactionarism, gender neutral language is often seen as a political statement, and law proposals against its use, as well as
sex education, are highly politicized within
anti-gender movement.
Brazilian sign language The
at sign (
@) in
Brazilian Sign Language SignWriting is used to express gender neutrality.
Italian In
Italian, female job titles are easily formed with , and other feminine suffixes: a female teacher is a , a female doctor is a . Historically, for jobs that have only recently opened up to women, there was some resistance to using the feminine forms, which are considered ugly or ridiculous, but recent surveys argue the average citizen has no problem with these forms. For example, a female lawyer can be called or (feminine) but some might prefer to use the word (masculine). Opponents of these feminine forms claim that they're offensive because they overemphasize the gender, or that they're incorrect neologisms. The
Accademia della Crusca and the
Treccani have spoken in favour of the usage of feminine job titles. In spite of traditional standards of Italian grammar, some Italians in recent years have opted to start using the pronoun "loro" (a literal translation of English "they"), to refer to people who desire to be identified with a gender neutral pronoun, although this usage may be perceived as incorrect due to the plural agreement of verbs. The suffix
-u, while not commonly used in standard Italian, has also been suggested as a gender neutral suffix.. In a similar way, some advocated using the
schwa (ə) as a new letter to signify a neutral or non-binary gender. However, most Italians would understand this new symbol orally as a masculine ending, visually as a feminine ending. In 2025, Italy banned these attempts to neutralize from being taught in schools, including the asterisk usage.
Catalan The most common gender-neutral third-person pronoun in
Catalan is , derived from the gendered pronouns and . == Semitic languages ==