Unusual? Put a girl in it and it´ll look normal.
I´ve finally got round to reading the polemical article on sexism in the Spanish language that was recently published in El País.
Written by Ignacio Bosque, a linguist at the Real Academia Española (RAE) and signed by a further 26 RAE académicos, it cites nine official sets of guidelines on using non-sexist language prepared by universities, autonomous communities, unions, Town Halls and other institutions.
Criticising the fact that these guidelines have been created (throw up your hands in horror) without RAE input, Bosque asserts they are unnatural for speakers of Spanish.
What can he mean, I wondered?
Then I read his hilarious example straight from the Constitution of that paradise of feminist freedom, Venezuela.
«Sólo los venezolanos y venezolanas por nacimiento … podrán ejercer los cargos de Presidente o Presidenta de la República, Vicepresidente Ejecutivo o Vicepresidenta Ejecutiva, Presidente o Presidenta y Vicepresidentes o Vicepresidentas de la Asamblea Nacional, magistrados o magistradas del Tribunal Supremo de Justicia, Presidente o Presidenta del Consejo Nacional Electoral, Procurador o Procuradora General de la República, Contralor o Contralora General de la República»…
Isn´t it fab? Language rid of sexism by mere decretazo. Now we women can parade about the shanties of Caracas in our frillies in anti-Chavez torchlight processions without being kíl in de worl capital of ómisai.
¡Chévere! ¡Mujeres al poder! It´s just a shame that the chavista policy of killing off the unrevolutionary, and furthermore unmanly, word “tumour” and replacing it with “lesions” isn´t being so successful, particularly when you´re getting them in your vergüenzas.
So, back to the article. In essence the masculine generic is the only real issue Bosque studies. Though he argues for equality for women, (yes, thank you, we´re really very grateful, now get to the point), his argument goes like this –
- The “unmarked masculine” los, todos, vosotros, nosotros, trabajadores, matemáticos, and millions more, subsumes and therefore makes invisible, the female subject in the generic masculine we (wee wee).
- This is a remnant of the times when women were excluded from everywhere but the semi-circlular mat in front of the kitchen sink.
- Yet this is now a mere linguistic fossil and that women shouldn´t feel excluded by it.
Skipping past the obvious fact that the RAE should button its collective lip on what women should or shouldn´t bloody-well feel, Spanish is, then, a language in which “lo humano se confunde con lo masculino,” as writer Laura Freixas has said in response to Bosque and his amorphous band of merry morphologists.
Yeah, he wants to break free.
But the formula for avoiding this problem hasn´t been found. Given the mindless approach of the República Bolivariana Venezolana above, I generally subscribe to Bosque´s approach, particularly since the Junta de Andalucía, which has its own, piggy piece of Orwellian fascism, two legs good, four legs bad, actually proposes FINING people who refuse to employ its clumsy, redundant and – literally – unspeakable formula.
(I recall my hotel in Tetouan, Morocco, to be decked out in the Andalusian green and white stripes of the said Junta and the receptionist informing my nosy little self that a plane-load of these [now] linguistic Lone Rangers were off in the Rif mountains around Chefchaouen indulging in kif and putas).
Equality, anyone?
Offensive? Put a girl in it and it´ll look great!
Meanwhile Mexican writer Jordi Volpi makes the following observation:
“Ninguna lengua es inocente. La española ..…tiene un matiz sexista inevitable, que está en el centro mismo de las estructuras gramaticales …. la lengua que utilizamos tiene muchos usos sexistas ….. viene la siguiente cuestión: ¿de estos, cuáles son modificables y cuáles no?
This is a much better proposition in my view. What can we actually fix and do we need the RAE to do it for us?
I´ll tell you what I think in my next post and … what the feck´s a contralor or contralora anyway?
Now, cariño, put on the damn dress!
About Mo
Nice post Mo. I often have the discussion with my wife about why is a word in Spanish feminine or masculine…Where is the logic?…It isnt to do with endings because there are always exceptions such as “el mapa” or “la mano”.It would be interesting to know if there is an explanation.
Paddy, I think you´ve hit the nail on the head! I´ve asked my linguist hubby and he can´t give me an answer, other than it´s arbitrary. I´m not so sure. I think that way, way back there had to be a consensus over what was male or female, even if they were dealing with an inanimate object. Then there´s all the outside influence and cross-fertilization that has muddied the waters but the idea of gender applied to objects must have had some justification – maybe we´ll never know what it was.
To do away with “el” and “la” wouldn’t work. I refer your readers to this brilliant post by Danielle from the blog Danielle in Brazil. http://daniellebrazil.blogspot.com/2011/11/gender-is-not-gender-nerdy-hour-kind-of.html
I personally (as a linguistics nerd) do not believe language can be sexist, racist, fascist, etc. People are; language is not. Trying to modify a language in this manner won’t work; it’s never worked.
It is a brilliant post! I agree that language can´t be any of those things but I do think it is a reflection of the biases of the speakers over time. But you´re right that forcing changes – on a large scale – won´t work. However, maybe some smaller things would, I need to write a post but haven´t got time!
“El Problema” : Even Spanish women blame everything that goes wrong on their menfolk.
Of course! But that´s not Spanish being anti-male, just being realistic!
Have you finished that pile of ironing yet Mo ? If you have, pop along and make me a pot of tea will you, sweetheart ?
Hey, my Light and Señor! Where you been, daddy-o? Actually, I suspected that being even more of a Daddy was the reason for your neglect of my bodacious blog! Do tell. Anyway, the ironing´s taking care of itself since it´s piled up so high now some of it´s falling out the window into the patio where various viejecitas are doing it before bringing it back up to me. As for the pot of tea, I serve it with this new sweetener called arsenikon … tea biscuits or digestives, mi viejo gruñon?
Besides which, I though these days it was ‘cariñ@’
As (see below about my next post) I like the ampersand to even the sex in language imbalance out! However, in a world run by cyberrobot feministrices (eh? a kind of Aussie bird?) it´s cariño, babe! The male ending will be the mark of inferiority!
I say let’s just do away with the whole ‘el’ and ‘la’ crap anyway, and stop trying to put sex on a table (/door/road/tree/ any other inanimate object ad nauseam). Just pick one and stick with it. ‘The’, perhaps?
Regarding living, breathing and thinking (sometimes) objects, I always address my friends with the greeting “Hi, guys” anyway. They know what sex they are, I know what sex they are. Their mode of address is of utter irrelevance to the way they are treated by society – especially one as overtly sexist as that of Spain.
Contralor/a – government tax inspector/ess?? And I thought ‘bastard’ was neuter anyway.
Yes! As I´ll be scribbling in my next post, I´m going to start using the generic FEMALE if there´s numerically more women than men in any gathering. Stuff the idea of using “vosotros” even if there´s nine hundred and ninety nine women and one baldy wee man snoozing at the back – NOT examining his cervix with a mirror! Thanks for the tax inspector/trix translation, I wouldn´t have used it if I´d known it was a swear word!
Very true. Language conveys exactly what each speaker means it to convey. You could easily imagine a politically-correct – even if cumbersome – public speaker adding o’s and a’s at the end of every word that has sexually-related gender, then trampling on every sensitivity imaginable and – more to the point – behaving like a Neanderthal when it really comes down to gender issues.
I would also argue that “bastard” is rarely used to refer to women in English, but native speakers might be able to prove me wrong,
Yes, Mr. Hubby, we don´t really call a woman a bastard. But what´s the feminine of it? Bitch? Back into sexist language again. Not sure about your first sentence, “Language conveys exactly what each speaker means it to convey.” I think most people use language unconsciously and that the language has clear meaning that most people just ignore. Your Neanderthal example (actually, I think they´re supposed to have been rather nice) echoes what Bosque says about politically-correct políticos who make no attempt at speaking in a non-sexist manner when not in front of a microphone, since it´s impossible to keep it up (all those o´s and a´s )and also because they only employ it for electioneering purposes. Where my real question is in all this is what Deb said – why does a table need to have a gender in some languages? Who decided it was “la mesa” and why? Is the answer to that lost in the mists of linguistic time?