“Gender-Neutral” Language Proposal Rejected by the Italian Parliament

Some languages have gender, a grammatical term for the assignment of masculine and feminine forms to words. English lost most of its gender after the invasion of the Normans in the Eleventh Century, leaving it with masculine forms for ordinary matters and feminine forms for loftier matters, as I have posted. See my post from June 2011, More Language for Conservatives to Avoid: Gender vs. Sex William Cinfici: More Language for Conservatives to Avoid: Gender vs. Sex, in which I explain that this assignment of grammatical forms is often arbitrary and not about sex, the division into male and female, a word that is thus not a synonym for gender. In other languages, however, gender continues to be used for most or at least many words. A proposal recently from the Left for the Italian Parliament to use “gender-neutral” forms for titles of officeholders was rejected overwhelmingly as being contrary to the Italian language and unnecessary, as the masculine forms do not necessarily indicate the sex of the officeholders, but are correct grammar. A masculine form of a word does not necessarily include only males, either in Italian or other languages, including English, as it is the ordinary form of the word. Unlike languages that have human authorities (usually monarchs) safeguarding the language or even governing what is proper to the language and what is not, Italian, like English (in America and other non-British Commonwealth States or territories), is not determined by politics. Language has been handed down by tradition and is conserved by lexicographers. New words may be coined, or foreign words loaned, but a language would become a different dialect or language if its forms were to change, just as it would if the meanings or pronunciations of its words were to change. Maintaining the proper grammar, meanings and pronunciations of a dialect or language thus aids communication and unity. Moreover, because laws are written, the meaning of the words cannot be changed as an illegitimate way to change the meaning of the laws without going through the representative and deliberative process. The Italian Parliament was right, therefore, to reject artificial “gender-neutral” language, as the masculine forms of the Italian language are already neutral about sex.