Basque The
Basque language is largely gender-free. Most nouns have no gender, though there are different words for females and males in some cases (, "mother"; , "father"; , "parent"). Some words are differentiated according to gender, like in the
English language (, "actress"; , "actor"), but they are not the main rule. For animals, there are particles (, "hen"; , "cock"; , "female bear"; , "male bear") or different words (, "cow"; , "bull"). File:Hi aizan.png|thumb|2019 magazine cover about the loss of (feminine ). means "Thou [female], hear!".|alt=An old woman in traditional headwear says to a teen-aged girl, who can't hear her because she wears earphones. While there are no gender-specific pronouns, in some dialects,
Basque verbs can agree
allocutively with the gender in the intimate singular second person (This is a mark of solidarity, providing no information since the listeners already know their genders.): , "you (female) have it"; , "you (male) have it". The verb is marked for addressee's gender, if they are intimate singular, whether or not they are referred to in the clause. In earlier stages, the relation between and was like
that of you and thou in early modern English. Most Basque speakers already avoid as too disrespectful, and its use has been diminishing. In practice, the forms are more frequent when addressing males than females. A perception developed that associates to spontaneity, peasantness, directness, values linked to Basque rural males, while the formal forms are used by women. It has been explained as a consequence of the
rural exodus of Basque peasants. Men would become workers in a factory with other men from their town. Females would become maids, waitresses, shop clerks where informal Basque would be felt improper. When institutions have tried to nuance closeness in their public communications, the male forms have been chosen. Non-sexism supporters propose substituting those forms by the more formal ones: "you have it". With the rise of gender neutrality, many compound words have been converted to gender-neutral forms. This can be done with several strategies: • Replacing the word
mies (man) with
henkilö (person), e.g.
esimies (lit. foreman) becomes
esihenkilö (foreperson). • Replacing the word
mies with
työntekijä (worker), e.g.
varastomies (lit. warehouse man) becomes
varastotyöntekijä (warehouse worker). • Adding the suffix
-ja to refer to a person doing the verb's action, e.g.
johtomies (lit. lead man) becomes
johtaja (leader).
Georgian In
Georgian, neither pronouns nor nouns have grammatical gender. The third person pronoun "ის"(is) means he, she or it.
Pulaar Pulaar lacks gender pronouns such as he/she. For example sentence "Himo He Jam" means (He/She is good). Pulaar either bends verbs and removes the pronoun all together, or uses gender neutral "Himo".
Swahili Swahili is a
Bantu language spoken in many parts of
Africa such as
Kenya and
Tanzania. It is largely gender neutral in specific nouns. Words such as actor/actress (mwigaji wa hadithi) and waiter/waitress (mtumishi mezani) are gender neutral among most others in the language. The words he, him, she, her translate to a single word in Swahili, yeye. There are gender specific words for man/woman (mwanamume/mwanamke) and mother/father (mama/baba), so it is not completely gender neutral, although a vast majority of the words do not distinguish between male or female. The language does not have a grammatical gender either.
Tagalog Tagalog, like most
Austronesian languages, is a
genderless language. The third-person pronoun
siya is used for both "he" and "she", as well as "it" in the context of being a neuter gender. Native nouns also feature this characteristic, normally with the addition of
lalaki ("male") or
babae ("female") to the noun to signify gender in terms such as
anak na lalaki ("son") or
babaeng kambing ("she-goat"). However, because Tagalog has had over three centuries of
Spanish influence, gender is usually differentiated in certain Spanish loanwords by way of the
suffixes
-a (feminine)
and
-o (masculine). These words mostly refer to ethnicities, occupations, and family. Some examples are:
Pilipina/
Pilipino (Filipina/o) and their derivative nicknames
Pinay/
Pinoy,
tindera/
tindero (vendor),
inhinyera/
inhinyero (engineer),
tita/
tito (aunt/uncle),
manang/
manong (elder sister/brother), and
lola/
lolo (grandmother/grandfather). A few gender-differentiating pairs originate from Chinese, mostly relating to kinship terminology such as
ate (big sister) and
kuya (big brother). The
gender neutral term 'Filipinx' has gained popularity especially among Filipino-Americans as a
demonym or an
adjective. Since then it has been controversial, with Filipinos living in the Philippines arguing that the term 'Filipino' is already genderless. While the word is borrowed from Spanish where suffixes indicate gender, the term borrowed into Tagalog is already used in a gender-neutral manner. The coined term is said to be unnecessary and that it imposes
eurocentric standards in the language.
Turkish Turkish is a gender-neutral language, like most other
Turkic languages. Nouns have a generic form and this generic form is used for both males and females. For example,
doktor (doctor),
eczacı (pharmacist),
mühendis (engineer) etc. Very few words for person reference contain a clue to the gender of the referred person, such as
anne/baba "mother/father",
kız/oğlan "girl/boy",
hanım/bey "lady/sir". The third person singular pronoun "o" refers to "he", "she" and "it".
Varieties of Chinese Sinitic languages (or topolects) are largely gender-neutral. Chinese has no inflections for gender, tense, or case, so comprehension is almost wholly dependent on
word order. There are also very few, if any, derivational inflections; instead, the language relies heavily on compounding to create new words. A Chinese word is thus inherently gender-neutral, and any given word can be preceded by an morpheme indicating masculinity or femininity. For example, the word for "doctor" is
yīshēng (
Traditional: 醫生,
Simplified: 医生). To specify the gender of the doctor, the speaker can add the morpheme for "male" or "female" to the front of it. Thus, to specify a male doctor, one would prefix
nán 男 (male), as in
nányīshēng (男醫生/男医生); to specify a female doctor, one would prefix
nǚ 女 (female), as in
nǚyīshēng (女醫生/女医生). Under normal circumstances, both male and female doctors would simply be referred to as
yīshēng (醫生/医生).
Mandarin Spoken Mandarin Chinese also has only one third-person singular pronoun,
tā for all referents.
Tā can mean "he" (also "
He" for deities, written differently), "she", or "it". However, the different meanings of
tā are written with different
characters: "他", containing the human
radical "亻", from "人", meaning person, for
he or a person of undetermined gender; "她", containing the feminine radical "女", for "she"; and "它" for "it"; "祂" containing the spirit radical "礻", from "示", for deities; "牠" containing the cow radical "牜", from "牛", for animals. The character for "she", containing the "woman" radical (glyphic element of a character's composition), was invented in the early twentieth century due to western influence; prior to this, the character indicating "he" today was used for both genders: it contains the "person" radical, which, as noted above, is not gender-specific. == See also ==