The past few years have seen an increase in discussion about gender identity, i.e. a person’s perception of the gender to which they belong, whether biological or psychological. The concept of non-binary gender identity, or being genderqueer, is one of the concepts introduced in this discussion; it allows for the existence of a large range of gender identities, that are neither masculine nor feminine, and are therefore outside of binary gender classifications.
Gender identity is not the same as sexual orientation, since non-binary individuals have a variety of sexual preferences, in exactly the same way as cisgender people.
The relevant discussion is, of course, inextricably linked to language, since many of the languages spoken today do not take this dimension into consideration, and linguistically and expressively exclude millions of people that do not ‘comply’ with binary gender identity.
Greek is one of those languages, together with Hebrew, French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and many others; they use binary gender pronouns and thus exclude gender identities that go beyond the narrow limits of he/she and male/female.
For example, in Greek, as in Hebrew, Spanish and other languages, there is a different “they” pronoun for a group made up of only men or both men and women, and a different “they” for groups consisting solely of women (αυτοί/αυτές).
The relevant discussion is, of course, inextricably linked to language, since many of the languages spoken today do not take this dimension into consideration, and linguistically and expressively exclude millions of people that do not ‘comply’ with binary gender identity.
Typically, if there is even one male in a group of females, then the masculine pronoun “αυτοί” is used automatically. The same is also true of the adjectives linked to the pronouns, which have to be either masculine or feminine.
This creates a problem, not only for gender-nonconforming students of these languages, but also for speakers of these languages in general, when they wish to refer to such persons. All non-binary persons are clearly faced with the issue of defining themselves in a binary language that excludes their identities.
In English, the solution has been to use the “they/them” pronouns, while Greek has made attempts to introduce the neutral pronoun “το”. However, Latinate languages, and also Arabic, Hebrew and others, do not have neutral pronouns, since the binary genders constitute the basis for creating nouns.
In French, non-binary persons have suggested other solutions, such as creating new words that contain both pronouns; by joining the masculine “ils” and the feminine “elles”, they have come up with the gender-neutral pronoun “iels”. The same has been done with demonstrative pronouns, where the masculine “eux” has been joined with the feminine “elles”, to create “elleux”.
At Podium, we are passionate about multilingualism, and make a point of observing all developments in the linguistic field very closely.
At the same time, in the vast majority of Spanish adjectives, where the letter “o” and the letter “a” indicate the masculine and the feminine respectively, an idea has been put forward to replace “o” and “a” with the neutral “x” or “e”. However, this has been rejected by the Royal Spanish Academy.
In any case, spoken languages are living organisms, and they constitute the most fertile ground for the creation of new concepts and the identification of new means of expressing them.
At Podium, we are passionate about multilingualism, and make a point of observing all developments in the linguistic field very closely.
