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I am wondering how to use a grammatical gender in Italian for non-gender-conforming people. For example, how should I use adjectives when referring to a person who does not identify as either male or female?

apaderno
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1 Answers1

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Italian has just two grammatical genders, masculine and feminine (no “it” or the like). Every noun (including objects and abstract notions) has one of these two grammatical genders, which, even in the case of humans or animals, doesn't necessarily relate with the sex (if any) of the person or animal involved.

For instance, sedia (chair) is feminine, while tavolo (table) is masculine; sole (sun) is masculine, while luna (moon) is feminine. Many animals have a single word for their kind, either masculine or feminine, independently of the actual sex of a single individual. For instance, pesce (fish) or topo (mouse) are masculine, and you should resort to a periphrasis to specify that a particular fish or mouse is a female; the reverse holds for tigre (tiger) or tartaruga (turtle), which are feminine.

For human beings, we normally use distinct words for females and males (or equal words with adjectives and pronouns agreeing with different genders): scrittore ([male] writer) - scrittrice ([female] writer); professore ([male] professor) - professoressa ([female] professor). But even so, some generic terms that refers to generic humans have a specific grammatical gender (an Italian noun cannot not have a gender). For instance, essere umano (human being) is grammatically masculine, while persona (person) is feminine. Moreover, such nouns as spia (spy) or guardia (guard) are feminine, whatever the person they refer to.

All of the above to say that Italian language and its speakers perceive grammatical gender as less connected to personal gender (or lack thereof) than, say, in English, where “he” and “she” refer just to male and, respectively, female people (or some animals and rare exceptions, such as ships).

(Once we know the grammatical gender of a noun, the adjectives and pronouns that refer to it have automatically the same grammatical gender: Mario è una persona molto generosa = “Mario is a very generous person”.)

So, I believe that a person who doesn't recognise themself as either male or female can use whatever words they prefer, perhaps choosing a single conventional grammatical gender, or alternating both or whatever. Keep in mind that in Italian no one objects if virile James Bond is called a spia (feminine only word for “spy”) or a woman singing as a soprano is called, well, soprano (a masculine noun in Italian).

DaG
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    I think DaG's answer covers pretty much all there is to say in terms of standard language and grammar. Just as an additional note, please be aware that, due to the modern debate on gender neutrality, it is becoming more and more common to see people writing an asterisk * or, more rarely (because it is not a character available on a standard Italian keyboard), a schwa ə to replace the gender-related vowels at the end of adjectives used as nouns. [...continue...] – secan Apr 27 '21 at 07:51
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    [...] For example "Good morning everyone!" in standard Italian is "Buongiorno a tutti!" (because the grammatical rule is that for groups of mixed or unknown gender, you use the masculine) but nowadays it is not uncommon to see "Buongiorno a tutt*!" (or, pretty seldom indeed, "Buongiorno a tuttə"). It happens with nouns too: for example "un gruppo di bambin*" for "a group of children". – secan Apr 27 '21 at 08:03
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    @secan Actually I've never seen either form used. – Zab Zonk Apr 29 '21 at 04:39
  • @ZabZonk it is used mainly in online communication, in particular social media and instant messaging systems, but the schwa is beginning to be adopted by public administrations too (https://bologna.repubblica.it/cronaca/2021/04/14/news/castelfranco_emilia_uso_schwa_e_rovesciata_inclusione-296445030/). Here you can see two articles about the topic; they mainly focus on the schwa but they mention the asterisk too: https://www.ilpost.it/2020/08/25/asterisco-lingua-italiana and https://www.ilpost.it/2020/08/28/schwa/ – secan Apr 29 '21 at 07:41
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    @secan Thank you for the links: I see it's a very recent trend. But I still find the whole issue ludicrous at best. – Zab Zonk Apr 29 '21 at 12:17
  • @ZabZonk, maybe it is, maybe it is not; the topic is too complex - not to mention completely off-topic - to be discussed here. Anyway, I think the relevant point for us here is that, regardless of how people feel about it, it is a rising trend so it might be worth being aware of it. ;) – secan Apr 29 '21 at 12:34
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    @ZabZonk I also cannot imagine a person saying Buongiorno a tutt*! (Buongiorno a tutt asterisco?) – apaderno May 05 '21 at 09:17
  • @kiamlaluno, that is exactly the reason why the schwa was proposed and some people prefer it over the asterisk: the schwa has its own sound and can be pronounced, while the asterisk works only for writing. – secan May 11 '21 at 08:31
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    @secan Except that Italian doesn't have that sound. I think that for Italians is difficult to get that sound right, and probably they will approximate it with an un-voiced a (an a without accents). – apaderno May 11 '21 at 08:50
  • If they go in the other direction, they don't pronounce any sound, as if tuttə was written tutt. – apaderno May 11 '21 at 08:54
  • @kiamlaluno, languages evolve; Italian might not have that sound yet (although that too is disputable: we do not use it into words but it is the sound we make for "ehmm") but nothing prevent it to be widely adopted in the future. Just to be clear, I am not saying we should or we should not use it; I am saying you can encounter it therefore it is good to know it exists and what it means. – secan May 11 '21 at 08:57
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    (Also, the schwa is a letter used in phonology, and different languages associate a different sound to the schwa, which can also be stressed, in Indonesian.) – apaderno May 11 '21 at 08:59
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    @secan No language uses the schwa to write its words. Artificially adding it doesn't make it accepted by everybody, nor isn't that a language evolution. – apaderno May 11 '21 at 09:06
  • (Probably, unstressed is more correct than un-voiced.) – apaderno May 11 '21 at 09:08
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    Once again: I am not advocating its use; I am simply documenting it. I am not a linguist and I am not particularly passionate about the debate. For what concerns me, personally, I tend to use the masculine for a group of mixed or unknown gender, because that is what I was taught at school and what I have done for my entire life, but I have no problem whatsoever to switch to the schwa (or anything else) if someone asks me to do so: it does not cost anything to me and it is important for them, so why not? – secan May 11 '21 at 09:10