Dual names for professions - good or bad?

[Cynep]

Today I heard a fragment of Ukrainian-language radio broadcast and remembered some old news I wanted to discuss with local denizens

Some months ago, Ukraine passed legislation to create female words for all professions. This is not a mega-revolution, Ukrainian language already had words not only for actress and waitress, but for say directress and driveress, and certainly more - but today I heard "artistess" and remembered about that legislation.

Seems interesting to me - while "the West" is moving towards greater unisexization, Ukraine is creating new gender-specific words. Do you think it's a move in the right direction? Or wrong?

[Sorensen]

Today I heard a fragment of Ukrainian-language radio broadcast and remembered some old news I wanted to discuss with local denizens

Some months ago, Ukraine passed legislation to create female words for all professions. This is not a mega-revolution, Ukrainian language already had words not only for actress and waitress, but for say directress and driveress, and certainly more - but today I heard "artistess" and remembered about that legislation.

Seems interesting to me - while "the West" is moving towards greater unisexization, Ukraine is creating new gender-specific words. Do you think it's a move in the right direction? Or wrong?

Gendered language isn't helpful lots of times. Then you have to cum up with words for the other 69 genders as well.

[Shadowferal]

*shrugs* Most languages already have gender specified words. Not sure as to why they'd add to the list. As this affects the female side of the equation, I'd say that their input is more relevant.

[Mihalik]

It depends.

See English is a bit strange in the sense that genitive conjugation has mostly disappeared in English.

Sure, we have gendered pronouns and you can if you really want gender a lot of descriptive nouns like "doctor", but English, unlike a lot of gendered languages, has a true "neutral" gender case that is fairly natural.

Take the word "child", in Spanish for example there is no equivalent gender neutral case, so Spanish falls back on the use of the masculine case "niño"

In a gendered language like Spanish you literally need to invent a new word/case if you want to be gender neutral.

Like Latino/Latina into Latinx or doctor/doctora into doctorx. Frankly, it can get a bit ridiculous as while you might be able to come up with a genderless descriptive noun that just sounds terrible when spelled, you still haven't done away with gendered conjugations of articles and adjectives.

I don't know enough about Slavic languages and grammar to determine what's happening here.

If the Slavic gender neutral is masculine, gendering descriptive nouns can be a progressive move.

If Slavic language have a true neutral case like English, then gendering words is regressive.

[Ursus]

That sounds like a pretty dumbass idea thought up by some dumbass politicians.

[Dezerte]

It's better to have gender neutral names for professions when you don't know the gender of the person in question. So linguistically speaking, it sounds like a bad idea.

[Egomaniac]

Can't think of a single good reason why this would be needed. You don't need two terms to describe the same profession. Just make the term gender neutral. Like "Doctor" or "Plumber".

Gender specific profession terms aren't needed in modern society. It's archaic terminology.

[Zuben]

The "male" version is often gender neutral, so I don't see the point.

[Felya]

Has anyone tried googling this law? Am having no luck, outside think tank articles, that don’t link the law.

[Sunseeker]

Rather look for ways to de-gender the names. Waiter/Waitress=server. etc...

Don't think laws are needed, but a social push would help.

[Cynep]

Has anyone tried googling this law? Am having no luck, outside think tank articles, that don’t link the law.

This article was top of my search, has further links. It's in Russian, but I think you can read Russian? It says the whole process is gradually going on since 2018, time flies!
https://strana.ua/news/286205-chto-t...v-ukraine.html

- - - Updated - - -

I don't know enough about Slavic languages and grammar to determine what's happening here.

If the Slavic gender neutral is masculine, gendering descriptive nouns can be a progressive move.

If Slavic language have a true neutral case like English, then gendering words is regressive.

Yes, eastern Slavic languages have masculine as gender neutral, with some words having a "feminitive". Russians are keeping it that way, while Ukrainians decided to create feminitives for everything.

[Mihalik]

Can't think of a single good reason why this would be needed. You don't need two terms to describe the same profession. Just make the term gender neutral. Like "Doctor" or "Plumber".

Gender specific profession terms aren't needed in modern society. It's archaic terminology.

It depends on the syntax of a given language.

If you're coming from a language like English, then sure it's pretty easy to do that.

On the other hand languages like Spanish/Italian/Portuguese that's a lot trickier because you don't just conjugate the noun, but also the articles, adjectives, prepositions and sometimes even the verbs.

Sentences need to have an internal gender case consistency for the conjugations to remain consistent and to keep the phonology (how the words sound when put together) flowing easily.

Latin languages typically lack a literal neutral case that exist in most germanic languages, and they default back to the masculine for all neutral cases. Slavic languages seem to be in the same situation, if I understand this correctly, tho I'll be honest, I literally know nothing of Slavic grammar.

[Egomaniac]

It depends on the syntax of a given language.

If you're coming from a language like English, then sure it's pretty easy to do that.

On the other hand languages like Spanish/Italian/Portuguese that's a lot trickier because you don't just conjugate the noun, but also the articles, adjectives, prepositions and sometimes even the verbs.

Sentences need to have an internal gender case consistency for the conjugations to remain consistent and to keep the phonology (how the words sound when put together) flowing easily.

Latin languages typically lack a literal neutral case that exist in most germanic languages, and they default back to the masculine for all neutral cases. Slavic languages seem to be in the same situation, if I understand this correctly, tho I'll be honest, I literally know nothing of Slavic grammar.

If they've made it this far without needing to gender specify their terms for professions...I don't see how it's a pressing need now.

[Mihalik]

If they've made it this far without needing to gender specify their terms for professions...I don't see how it's a pressing need now.

They are gender specifying, they are just defaulting to the masculine form.

I can't really think of a straightforward explanation, but think of it like this...

You know how the word nurse of culturally gendered female in English? Yes, men can be nurses, but historically speaking and even today, if you say "nurse" a woman pops to mind.

Or think of the word seamstress. Can you name the masculine form without Googling it?

Well, in gendered languages due to that fall back on the masculine for the neutral case, the same social stigmas tend to develop, culturally sidelining women from said professions. Of course just coming up with a female gender case won't make that cultural bias disappear, but it can help.

Remember, these languages always fall back on the masculine when speaking in neutral. And all nouns except some proper names are gendered by default. So conceptually they have no true neutral case.

[Egomaniac]

They are gender specifying, they are just defaulting to the masculine form.

I can't really think of a straightforward explanation, but think of it like this...

You know how the word nurse of culturally gendered female in English? Yes, men can be nurses, but historically speaking and even today, if you say "nurse" a woman pops to mind.

Or think of the word seamstress. Can you name the masculine form without Googling it?

Well, in gendered languages due to that fall back on the masculine for the neutral case, the same social stigmas tend to develop, culturally sidelining women from said professions. Of course just coming up with a female gender case won't make that cultural bias disappear, but it can help.

Remember, these languages always fall back on the masculine when speaking in neutral. And all nouns except some proper names are gendered by default. So conceptually they have no true neutral case.

Creating gender neutral terminology would do far more for cultural bias. I mean, it seems either way they have to create new terminology.

[Zuben]

Creating gender neutral terminology would do far more for cultural bias. I mean, it seems either way they have to create new terminology.

Indeed, if it's a problem that the gender neutral form is also masculine, then gender neutralize it even further, like English has done with terms like 'fireman'->'firefighter'. On that note, it's great that we didn't get 'firewomen' or 'firepeople'.

[Mihalik]

Creating gender neutral terminology would do far more for cultural bias. I mean, it seems either way they have to create new terminology.

Again. This is where the issue of syntax consistency and phonology becomes an issue.

I'm sure you heard "Latinx" term before.

Masculine is Latino.
Feminine is Latina.
Gender Neutral is Latino.
There's no natural way to pronounce the X in Latinx in Spanish. Normally that x in Spanish would sound something like an SH sound, like in the English word "Show".

Now if you want to say something like "The Spanish community" in Spanish you'd say "La comunidad Latina" because the preferred case for the descriptive noun "Latino" in Spanish is actually the feminine form, unless you specifically talk about a Latino man. As you notice the article "la" is also gender harmonized with the female case of the noun, so if you want to be fully gender neutral you'd have to write that as "Lx comunidad Latinx", and remember the x is "sh" sound. It's unreadable.

An attempted work around was using the @ symbol as a replacement for the a/o gendered conjugation. Like "L@ comunidad Latin@" the problem with this one is that there's no actual sound for this. So while it works in writing, tho looks atrocious, when it's read it actually ought to be read as "La Lo comunidad Latina, Latino" but that both sounds atrocious and also cognitively makes no sense as it's redundant and the longer the sentence/text is the increasingly worse it gets.

So making a language that has no neutral gender case, neutral is fucking hard. You need to literally come up with a new phonology and rework your entire article/noun system around it.

Remember, all nouns, all of them from table, to wall, to chair, to colors, to the names of vegetables, everything is gendered.

[Daedius]

What an insensitive thing to do... what about all those poor people that don't identify as either genders... should they be called "Direct" instead of "Director"?!

[Shadowferal]

Never heard anyone referring to oneself as an "it." And I hope I never will.

[Mihalik]

Never heard anyone referring to oneself as an "it." And I hope I never will.

It's unnecessary as English has a true gender neutral case for humans. People/person/child etc and they. All Germanic languages do.

So if you identify as "it" well, that's not a gender related issue.

Tho there are also languages like Hungarian, which is an anomaly in Europe as its not an Indo-European language, that has absolutely no gender case. Not even gender pronouns. Only way to denote gender is by explicitly stating the gender of the person you're talking about by agglutinating the gender at the end of the word, like saying "actorwoman" or "actorman" something that's rarely done unless it's important to denote the gender.