Anti-woke Buenos Aires bans gender-neutral language in schools

[mclumber1]

I'm trying to wrap my mind around how you make Spanish gender neutral, but whatever...

In Argentina, a Battle Over Gender-Inclusive Language in Classrooms - The New York Times

WWW.NYTIMES.COM

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The city of Buenos Aires blocked the use of gender-inclusive language in schools, reigniting off a debate that is reverberating across the world.

 

[SoberChef]

While I never learned Spanish, I do recall French rather well & understand that a lot of basics are based in "La" or "Le". Yeah still not entirely sure why that should be debatable, its basic fundamental understanding when trying to learn a new language.

[GeneticBlueprint]

I don't have a NYT sub so I can't read the specifics. Are they talking about de-gendering the entire language? An absolute linguistic impossibility overnight? Or are they talking about just when referring to people?

[Keyser_Soze]

16 minutes ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

I don't have a NYT sub so I can't read the specifics. Are they talking about de-gendering the entire language? An absolute linguistic impossibility overnight? Or are they talking about just when referring to people?

 

 

Quote

BUENOS AIRES — Instead of “amigos,” the Spanish word for “friends,” some Spanish speakers use “amigues.” In place of “todos,” or “all,” some write “todxs.” And some signs that would say “bienvenidos,” or “welcome,” now say “bienvenid@s.”

 

The changes, which had been informally adopted by teachers in schools across Buenos Aires, were a deliberate effort to include people who don’t identify as male or female in a language where many words are categorized as either masculine or feminine.

 

Similar gender-neutral language is being increasingly introduced across Latin America, as well as in other languages, including English and French, by supporters who say it helps create a more inclusive society.

 

But to some Spanish speakers, including many academics and politicians, the changes degrade a language spoken by a half-billion people around the world.

In Argentina, the tension has shifted from a war of public opinion to a battle over policy.

 

The city government in Buenos Aires, the nation’s capital, last month banned teachers from using any gender-neutral words during class and in communications with parents. The city’s education minister said such language violated the rules of Spanish and stymied student’s reading comprehension.

 

[GeneticBlueprint]

38 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

 

 

 

Yup. That's fucking stupid. The city is in the right.

[GeneticBlueprint]

To add some further color commentary here now that I'm at an actual keyboard:

 

My major was Linguistics. Linguists by definition are scientific descriptivists--that is to say that they observe language, they measure language, they describe language, they hypothesize and theorize about language change. They are not grammatical prescriptivists. They don't make rules. They don't say one thing is right or wrong. However, there is one overarching principle that is a hard and fast rule for linguists: It needs to be mutually intelligible. If it's creating confusion it is not useful in communication.

 

Additionally, Spanish is my second language. And wow thinking about it I've been speaking it daily for over 16 years now. And something I still have to remind myself once in a while when I'm trying to remember the gender of a word is a principle I learned on the first. fucking. day of an intensive preparatory course: Masculine/feminine words do NOT mean boy/girl words. They can mean that. And when you are dealing with one person and their pronouns, related titles and adjectives, you can certainly use that as a guiding light. But even then there are plenty of counter examples. And it's especially true when dealing with proper nouns. For example, a tie, something you would normally associate with a male, is a feminine word in Spanish. And this principle is exactly the same in two other languages that, while I don't speak them fluently, I have multiple years at university of them under my belt--German and Russian. An example I can think of off the top of my head: in German "girl" (girl!) is a neutral word. Not feminine. 

 

All that being said, I will use whichever pronouns with you that you desire. I will feminize or masculinize adjectives when referring to you in the way you prefer. No issue there. That doesn't create confusion. But when you are trying to de-gender non-pronoun words like bienvenido*, you are ironically genderizing them by making people draw an association between a word and boy/girl that they never would have in the first place. And you are not going to win a lot of fence sitters or people that could be persuaded to use your preferred pronoun to your cause. Because you're creating confusion. And it's not useful communication.

 

*Reading the quoted portion of the article again I realized they're using the adjective of bienvenido and not the noun. So maybe this rant was for nothing. Carry on. I'm still not going to use symbols I have to press an extra button on my phone keyboard to get to when referring to groups of people though. Fuck that.

[Keyser_Soze]

Personally this isn't my fight but if people are trying to be more inclusive with their language I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Even if a linguistics expert says the word is not "masculine or feminine" the kids still perceive it that way and if they don't identify with either of those then they should have their word. I think it's a bit silly to be a purist with linguistics. Languages change all the time, foreign slang is something else. Sure you could be the scholar who speaks proper Spanish, Japanese, Korean, etc but when you talk to some native speakers it's like they are speaking a different language, you're speaking boomer language at that point. Kids are smart and the language is being made to accommodate them so I don't think there is any reason to be worried about the kids getting confused.

 

Quote

“It just makes you feel really bad,’’ said Agostina Fernández Tirra, 17, who identifies as nonbinary and attends a public school in Buenos Aires. “They put us all in the same box — you are either female or male. Those of us in the middle, who are neither male nor female, it’s like they don’t even consider you.”

 

Quote

“You can’t prohibit something that’s already so in use,” says Alexandra Rodríguez, an after-school volunteer at a community center. “Language is something that’s always being modified. It’s alive because we are alive — and it will keep on changing.”

 

[GeneticBlueprint]

Yes, changes happen all the time. But we're not talking about "let's not say that taboo word anymore". We're talking massive overhaul of morphemes. Massive overhauls of grammatical structure take generations to occur and generally are a byproduct of other linguistic phenomenon like contractions or sounds merging or finding a middle between two common sounds found together frequently. Not because a group, even a very large one, decides they want to speak a certain way. I don't think this will catch on personally because the historical data doesn't support such a change occurring. Maybe this is an outlier though.

[Keyser_Soze]

48 minutes ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

Yes, changes happen all the time. But we're not talking about "let's not say that taboo word anymore". We're talking massive overhaul of morphemes. Massive overhauls of grammatical structure take generations to occur and generally are a byproduct of other linguistic phenomenon like contractions or sounds merging or finding a middle between two common sounds found together frequently. Not because a group, even a very large one, decides they want to speak a certain way. I don't think this will catch on personally because the historical data doesn't support such a change occurring. Maybe this is an outlier though.

 

The article lists a bunch of other countries that are changing (or attempting to change) their languages to be gender neutral including France so I don't think it's an outlier.

[SoberChef]

5 hours ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

To add some further color commentary here now that I'm at an actual keyboard:

 

My major was Linguistics. Linguists by definition are scientific descriptivists--that is to say that they observe language, they measure language, they describe language, they hypothesize and theorize about language change. They are not grammatical prescriptivists. They don't make rules. They don't say one thing is right or wrong. However, there is one overarching principle that is a hard and fast rule for linguists: It needs to be mutually intelligible. If it's creating confusion it is not useful in communication.

 

Additionally, Spanish is my second language. And wow thinking about it I've been speaking it daily for over 16 years now. And something I still have to remind myself once in a while when I'm trying to remember the gender of a word is a principle I learned on the first. fucking. day of an intensive preparatory course: Masculine/feminine words do NOT mean boy/girl words. They can mean that. And when you are dealing with one person and their pronouns, related titles and adjectives, you can certainly use that as a guiding light. But even then there are plenty of counter examples. And it's especially true when dealing with proper nouns. For example, a tie, something you would normally associate with a male, is a feminine word in Spanish. And this principle is exactly the same in two other languages that, while I don't speak them fluently, I have multiple years at university of them under my belt--German and Russian. An example I can think of off the top of my head: in German "girl" (girl!) is a neutral word. Not feminine. 

 

All that being said, I will use whichever pronouns with you that you desire. I will feminize or masculinize adjectives when referring to you in the way you prefer. No issue there. That doesn't create confusion. But when you are trying to de-gender non-pronoun words like bienvenido*, you are ironically genderizing them by making people draw an association between a word and boy/girl that they never would have in the first place. And you are not going to win a lot of fence sitters or people that could be persuaded to use your preferred pronoun to your cause. Because you're creating confusion. And it's not useful communication.

 

*Reading the quoted portion of the article again I realized they're using the adjective of bienvenido and not the noun. So maybe this rant was for nothing. Carry on. I'm still not going to use symbols I have to press an extra button on my phone keyboard to get to when referring to groups of people though. Fuck that.

 

Thank you for such a succinct summation. Reading that, I kept thinking to myself "What would George Carlin have to say on not just this specific matter, but the whole of gender pronouns, etc.?" considering his love & affinity FOR language.

[unogueen]

Good way to incorporate x into argentine spanish, because otherwise it's useless (I used to have an alphabet book that explained 'x' as an anglophone concern). But how do even pronounce bienvenid@s?

 

But I was under the impression that the latinx and other aggregating nomenclature was very unpopular. As an Asian I think it's best to define cultural identity to specificity like geographic and historical relevance that just quash everything into a blob, like Asians are considered.

[Jason]

The Awful German Language

FACULTY.GEORGETOWN.EDU

 

Quote

"Gretchen. Wilhelm, where is the turnip?

"Wilhelm. She has gone to the kitchen.

"Gretchen. Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden?

Wilhelm. It has gone to the opera."