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<\/p>\nOne of the trickier aspects of learning to speak French, for the average English speaker at least, is dealing with the rules of gender. Not just remembering which nouns are masculin <\/b>and which f\u00e9minin<\/b>, but also l’accord des adjectifs<\/b>, keeping professions straight, and understanding why one man in a group of 99 women takes precedence (at least linguistically speaking!) over all of the women. While no one seems too keen on getting rid of the genre des noms<\/b>, there is movement afoot to address the other two ‘issues’.<\/p>\n
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Le masculin l’emporte sur le f\u00e9minin<\/b><\/p>\n
In French, if Pierre goes to the movies avec toutes ses amies<\/b> (with all his female friends<\/i>), we say that ils vont au cin\u00e9ma<\/b> (they go to the movies<\/i>, using the masculine plural ils<\/i> even though les filles<\/b> (the girls<\/i>) outnumber le gar\u00e7on<\/b> (the boy)). <\/i><\/p>\n
And if I have a white cat (chat, <\/em>n.m.<\/em>) and a white car (voiture, n.f.<\/em>), mon chat et ma voiture sont blancs.<\/b><\/p>\n The two examples above are grammatically correct, because in French le masculin l’emporte sur le f\u00e9minin <\/b>(the masculine trumps the feminine).<\/i><\/p>\n They are also now being reconsidered by those who argue that how we speak affects how we think<\/a> … and act, and that making le m\u00e2le <\/b>superior to la femelle <\/b>in language might be impacting les relations entre les sexes <\/b>(the relationship between the sexes).<\/i><\/p>\n L’\u00e9criture inclusive<\/b><\/p>\n To remedy this situation, some have proposed a new approach to writing called l’\u00e9criture inclusive<\/b> (inclusive writing<\/i>) that\u00a0<\/b>outlines a series of rules<\/a> that, according to its supporters<\/a>, would “contribuer \u00e0 l’\u00e9galit\u00e9 femmes-hommes” <\/b>(contribute to the equality between women and men).<\/i><\/p>\n The first of these rules would replace la loi de la priorit\u00e9 <\/b>(the law of priority)<\/i> with la r\u00e8gle de la proximit\u00e9 <\/b>(the rule of proximity<\/i>) in which agreement is driven not by the sole male but by the nearest subject.<\/p>\n This means that, selon la r\u00e8gle de la proximit\u00e9, mon chat et ma voiture sont blanches<\/b>.<\/p>\n A second rule – list all the genders of a subject in alphabetical order<\/em> – would mean that when Pierre et ses amies vont au cin\u00e9mas, elles et il vont au cin\u00e9ma!<\/b><\/p>\n Another ‘invention’ of l’\u00e9criture inclusive <\/b>concerns how the gender of professions (which are traditionally represented as masculine when the context is not clearly feminine) and other indeterminant nouns should be represented. Look at the following examples:
\nCommer\u00e7ant\u00b7e\u00b7s<\/b> (merchants)
\n<\/i>La candidat\u00b7e \/ les candidat\u00b7e\u00b7s <\/b>\u00a0(the candidate, the candidates)
\n<\/i>Les artisan\u00b7e\u00b7s<\/b> (the craftspeople)
\n<\/i>Les agriculteur\u00b7rice\u00b7s<\/b> (the farmers)<\/i><\/p>\n
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