[Ads-l] Teen movement for gender neutrality in Argentine Spanish

[Barretts Mail]

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_Spanish <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_Spanish>. BB

> On 6 Dec 2019, at 11:50, Andy Bach <afbach at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> I saw that one too - the a/e swap is a web page thing, there's a "span"
> that swaps them:
> 
> <div class="spanish-translation">Un lenguaje para tod<span
> id="spanish-cycle">e</span>s</div>
> 
> using JavaScript[1].
> 
> a
> 
> [1]
> 
> span.innerHTML = "Un lenguaje para tod<span
> id='spanish-cycle'>o</span>s";  span.className =
> "spanish-translation";  my_elem.parentNode.insertBefore(span,
> my_elem);  function start() {    var rotator =
> document.getElementById("spanish-cycle");    var delayInSeconds = 1;
> var letters = ["o", "a", "e"];    var num = 0;    var changeLetter =
> function() {      var len = letters.length;      rotator.innerText =
> letters[num++];      if (num == len) {        num = 0;      }    };
> setInterval(changeLetter, delayInSeconds * 1000);  }
> 
> 
> On Fri, Dec 6, 2019 at 1:03 PM Mark Mandel <markamandel at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Get a load of this! From the *Washington Post*
>> 
>> 
>> https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2019/12/05/teens-argentina-are-leading-charge-gender-neutral-language/
>> 
>> *A Language for All*
>> 
>> *Un lenguaje para todes**
>> 
>> Teens in Argentina are leading the charge to eliminate gender in language
>> 
>> By Samantha Schmidt
>> <https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/samantha-schmidt/>
>> 
>> DECEMBER 5, 2019
>> 
>> *[**Lee este artículo en español*
>> <
>> https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2019/12/05/los-jvenes-en-argentina-estn-librando-una-batalla-lingstica-para-eliminar-el-gnero-del-espaol/
>>> 
>> *]*
>> 
>> BUENOS AIRES — As hundreds of teenagers flooded the dimly lit street for
>> the student government rally, 18-year-old Natalia Mira raised her hand in
>> the air and led them in a chant.
>> 
>> It was a song often heard among young people at political rallies in Buenos
>> Aires, an ode to a former Argentine president, the populist Juan Perón, and
>> his wife, Eva.
>> 
>> “We will fight from sun to sun,” they sang in front of their high school.
>> “We are the youth, the soldiers of Perón.”
>> 
>> In Spanish, a language in which all nouns are assigned a gender, the word
>> for soldiers is masculine: “Los soldados de Perón.”
>> 
>> The lyrics Mira sang were different: “Les soldades.”
>> 
>> To most Spanish speakers, the “e” in both words would sound jarring — and
>> grammatically incorrect.
>> But here, teenagers are rewriting the rules of the language to eliminate
>> gender. In classrooms and daily conversations, young people are changing
>> the way they speak and write — replacing the masculine “o” or the feminine
>> “a” with the gender-neutral “e” in certain words — in order to change what
>> they see as a deeply gendered culture.
>> 
>> *[Click link for whole story]*
>> 
>> * How peculiar! I copied and pasted these pieces of text from the webpage,
>> but this word showed up in the paste as "tod*a*s", the standard feminine
>> form for 'all'. Is my smartphone auto-miscorrecting?

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