A challenging view on language and gender.
El debate del lenguaje inclusivo vs. economía del lenguaje establecido por la Real Academia Española (RAE) ha ido evolucionando a través de los años. No porque las partes de este debate hayan encontrado una forma de conciliación, sino porque la fluidez del género y las necesidades de ir más allá de lo binario exigen un nuevo lenguaje.
Las lenguas latinas dificultan el proceso de manejar un lenguaje inclusivo al no presentar opciones neutras en sustantivos o pronombres. Ante la creciente tendencia de usar el los y las en vez de los, o de alternar entre los pronombres los y las especificando que se usarán indistintamente, la RAE responde que “este tipo de desdoblamientos son artificiosos e innecesarios desde el punto de vista lingüístico” explicando también que estos usos van en contra del “principio de economía del lenguaje”.
Justifican su respuesta con el siguiente argumento:
“El uso genérico del masculino se basa en…
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Equinoxio 
Although I do not understand everything, I know very well that in the German language we have similar problems, because traditionally male words were used to describe both genders. For example the artists written in German then only in the male version “die künstler” which comprises then also females (by traditional general understanding). When talking about males and females correctly you have to mention both genderforms of the word “die Künstler (males) und die Künstlerinnen (females)” which may be sometimes a bit complicated. Now a lot of mostly female German writers – also here on WordPress – quite often make a mixture of both in one word like this “die Kü9nstlerInnen” (meaning both genders) which is not officially approved by the Duden-commission and also not used like this in newspapers normally. But why is the “moon” in French/Spanish a female substantive but in German a male one? Neutral categorizations would be quite often more easy, helpful and appropriate. Nice weekend!
Thank you for your thoughts. In that respect english is much more practical. Though why they think a ship is female is beyond me. And yes, there are gender differences between most languages. Milk in french is masculine and feminine in spanish. Makes for strange mistakes. Der mond und die sonne? Very strange. And then you have a “diminutif” that is gender-free. 😉 Bon week-end
Milk is also femine in German like in Spanish, only a child is gender free in German = das Kind, which makes much sense for me.
Die milch? Interesting. And Das kind does make sense. You have the advantage (or complication) to have a neutral mode. 🙂