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¿Es usted diabético o diabética? - when to use both masculine and feminine form?

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Cifi

¿Es usted diabético o diabética? - when to use both masculine and feminine form?

Post by Cifi »

I always thought when gender doesn't matter or is unknown Spanish would kind of default to the masculine form, but perhaps this is a misconception? Is it only true for mixed groups in plural, as "queridos amigos" where you wouldn't add "y queridas amigas" even if they are men and women?

P.S.: The following sentence in that exercise was "Entonces es importante que no coma jamón, mantequilla y queso crema".

Native: :de: Intermediate: :uk: Lower intermediate: :es: Beginner: :fr: Absolute beginner: 🇬🇷
(If there are errors in what I'm writing in either language, please do correct me - I'll never take it as offense or something like that.)

Cifi

Re: ¿Es usted diabético o diabética? - when to use both masculine and feminine form?

Post by Cifi »

Here's one where Duolingo does it in plural, too, referring to a mixed-gender group:

Un maestro les habla a sus alumnos: "¡Bienvenidos y bienvenidas al primer día del noveno grado! ¡Imagino que tienen ganas de aprender!"

How common would that be? Should I rather address my friends as "queridos amigos y queridas amigas"?

Native: :de: Intermediate: :uk: Lower intermediate: :es: Beginner: :fr: Absolute beginner: 🇬🇷
(If there are errors in what I'm writing in either language, please do correct me - I'll never take it as offense or something like that.)

User avatar
MatOzone
Catalonia

Re: ¿Es usted diabético o diabética? - when to use both masculine and feminine form?

Post by MatOzone »

https://www.rae.es/espanol-al-dia/los-ciudadanos-y-las-ciudadanas-los-ninos-y-las-ninas" wrote:


"Los ciudadanos y las ciudadanas", "los niños y las niñas", "los diabéticos y las diabéticas"

This type of unfolding is artificial and unnecessary from a linguistic point of view. In the nouns that designate animated beings, there is the possibility of the generic use of the masculine to designate the class, that is, all the individuals of the species, without distinction of sex: Todos los ciudadanos mayores de edad tienen derecho a voto (All citizens of legal age have the right to vote).

The explicit mention of the feminine is only justified when the opposition of the genere is relevant in the context: El desarrollo evolutivo es similar en los niños y las niñas de esa edad (The evolutionary development is similar in boys and girls of that age). The current trend towards the indiscriminate splitting of the noun into its masculine and feminine form goes against the principle of language economy and is based on extralinguistic reasons. Therefore, these repetitions should be avoided, which generate syntactic and agreement difficulties, and unnecessarily complicate the writing and reading of the texts.

The generic use of the masculine is based on its status as an unmarked term in the masculine/feminine opposition. Therefore, it is incorrect to use the feminine to jointly refer to both sexes, regardless of the number of individuals of each sex that are part of the group. Thus, los alumnos (male students) is the only correct way of referring to a mixed group, even though the number of female students is greater than that of male students.


From a scientific, realistic, and professional point of view, there is no doubt:

In Spanish the masculine singular is used to refer to the generic, and you can use also the masculine plural:

El hombre ha llegado a la luna, El hombre viene del mono,

Es importante que un diabético no coma jamón, mantequilla ni queso crema
or
Es importante que los diabéticos no coman jamón, mantequilla ni queso crema

In the same way, the use of Es mi dentista is just as correct as dentista es quien trata los dientes or el trompetista toca la trompeta, médico es quien practica la medicina, etc...

If we want to specify that we do not use the "generic" but specifically the masculine gender, we must lengthen the generic phrase:

El hombre, y no la mujer, ha llegado a la luna (The man, and not the woman, has reached the moon)
El hombre viene del mono, y la mujer viene de la mona (The man comes from the male monkey, and the woman comes from the female monkey)

Él es mi dentista (He's my dentist, a man), Un dentista es quien trata los dientes, exactamente lo mismo que una dentista (A male dentist is the one who treats the teeth, exactly the same as a female dentist) or
el trompetista toca la trompeta cuando es un hombre, y también toca la trompeta cuando es una mujer (the trumpeter plays the trumpet as a man, and also plays the trumpet as a woman).

And we can lengthen or retouch it as much as we want:

Es mi dentista, pudiendo ser hombre, mujer, de género fluído, y cualquier otra opción

El hombre, la mujer, los hombres, las mujeres, las personas de género fluído (...) vienen del mono, la mona, los monos, las monas, l@s mon@s, lXs monXs, les mones (...)

But because of non-scientific issues, it has been imposed to go against that rule.

Now we "must" say

queridos alumnos y queridas alumnas

el dentista o la dentista

un o una dentista

etc.

As you can see, there are those of us who do not agree with this current option, but we are in the minority.

I fully support 🇺🇦!

NATIVE: ImageㅤAlso: Image Image Image ... and some others... Duolingo Course Data.

User avatar
MatOzone
Catalonia

Re: ¿Es usted diabético o diabética? - when to use both masculine and feminine form?

Post by MatOzone »

A long explanation, in spanish, can be found here:

https://www.rae.es/dpd/género

I fully support 🇺🇦!

NATIVE: ImageㅤAlso: Image Image Image ... and some others... Duolingo Course Data.

Cifi

Re: ¿Es usted diabético o diabética? - when to use both masculine and feminine form?

Post by Cifi »

Thank you, [mention]MatOzone[/mention]

I envy the English speakers for having dropped grammatical gender altogether long ago. It's much easier when there is just one form that undoubtedly includes everyone regardless of gender. Actually I've heard that the few female forms like actress have become less popular because some consider them discriminatory.

Native: :de: Intermediate: :uk: Lower intermediate: :es: Beginner: :fr: Absolute beginner: 🇬🇷
(If there are errors in what I'm writing in either language, please do correct me - I'll never take it as offense or something like that.)

User avatar
gmads
Mexico

Re: ¿Es usted diabético o diabética? - when to use both masculine and feminine form?

Post by gmads »

MatOzone wrote: Wed Feb 08, 2023 10:25 am

[...] there are those of us who do not agree with this current option, but we are in the minority.

I don't think we are; not by any means.

Making exception of those that define themselves as non-binary (for short), the vast majority are unaware or don't care. From the remainder, some care and disagree, but only denote the fact by writing or talking about it informally (most people avoid getting into debates). Some care and disagree, and they are the ones debating publicly and receiving and enduring intense criticism. Of those who seem to agree, one can easily imagine that most do so just to be on the politically correct side, either by conviction or imposition. Finally, I would say that very, very few may actually be convinced that these language changes are necessary or correct.


:hash:  ㆍenglish ㆍSentenceDiscussion ㆍgeneral ㆍdebate

Last edited by gmads on Fri Jun 09, 2023 6:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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eI000yo

Re: ¿Es usted diabético o diabética? - when to use both masculine and feminine form?

Post by eI000yo »

¡Hola a todo el mundo!
Al menos en España, desde los organismos públicos, se imparten cursos de lenguaje inclusivo en los que se conciencia y se enseña a dirigirse al público de una forma más integradora no solamente en cuanto a evitar expresiones no sexistas sino también en relación a otro tipo de discriminaciones. No sé si eso se da también en otras latitudes.
Por tanto, sí que es frecuente encontrar este tipo de frases, aunque creo recordar que en este caso la mejor formulación sería, si no me falla la memoria, ¿Es usted una persona con diabetes? .
El lenguaje es un mero instrumento de comunicación y puede usarse de muchas maneras. Apelar a la economía del lenguaje es un poco hacer trampas porque la buena educación no es necesariamente breve. Saludar no es económico, por ejemplo. Pero los buenos modales lo exigen. ¿O suprimimos los saludos también?
Por supuesto se pude usar el término no marcado que en español suele ser el de género masculino. Excepcionalmente lo puede ser el de género femenino: carne de ternera, hasta donde yo sé, incluye también la carne de los machos. Pero bueno, ¡sigamos!
Las palabras en español no tienen órganos sexuales ni nada parecido, que yo sepa. Género gramatical y sexo son dos cosas totalmente diferentes. De hecho, en español, hay género neutro y también género ambiguo, no solamente masculino y femenino. Y es una cuestión de concordancia. No, no es algo inútil, sirve para dar cohesión a las frases. Cada lengua usa diferente tipo de estrategias, que ni son mejores ni peores.
Y tampoco el hecho de tener géneros es mejor ni peor desde el punto de vista social. Ahí tenemos sociedades que usan lenguas sin distinguir entre estos géneros que son terriblemente discriminadoras con las niñas y las mujeres. No me gusta señalar pero posiblemente el caso más sangrante en la actualidad es quizás el de las que usan lenguas iranias.
Al final es la decisión de cada una de las personas que usamos las lenguas lo que las va modelando. Son algo vivo y cambiante.
Y aunque es verdad que en este caso se puede preguntar perfectamente ¿Es usted diabético? dirigiéndose a una mujer creo que demostraría poca empatía hacerlo así cuando existen alternativas más inclusivas.
De otros temas prefiero no opinar porque están menos claros como el del uso del femenino como genérico, por ejemplo.

Por cierto, la frase que sigue a la pregunta la formularía como Entonces es importante que no coma ni jamón, ni mantequilla ni queso crema.
El uso de la cópula y en una frase negativa me resulta extraño.

Jimbo

Re: ¿Es usted diabético o diabética? - when to use both masculine and feminine form?

Post by Jimbo »

Cifi wrote: Wed Feb 08, 2023 11:01 am

Thank you, @MatOzone

I envy the English speakers for having dropped grammatical gender altogether long ago. It's much easier when there is just one form that undoubtedly includes everyone regardless of gender. Actually I've heard that the few female forms like actress have become less popular because some consider them discriminatory.

This particular sentence looks like it's been influenced by the language of officialdom, which I'm pretty sure is overly technical no matter what language it's in. There's two contexts I can think of for that sentence. One is advertising copy - either, though unlikely, in the eye-catching part (a different but no less artificial form of language), or more likely in the plain text at the bottom that the regulator insists they include (which is padded to be as boring and convoluted as they can get away with), and the other option I can think of is in forms and warnings and the like - which are written both to be idiot proof and to remove any room for ambiguity.

'Diabetic' might not be a gendered word in English, and indeed very few words are, but the language is more than capable of being complicated in other ways when a given writer wants to be as inclusive (or long-winded) as possible.

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