How to Use Gender-Neutral Language in German & French

It’s complicated.

Collage created on Canva by author.

(Addition from February 2024: Over 11k people have found this article through Google alone, so it seems to have been a valuable resource for learners or speakers of French and/or German, or other language enthusiasts. I try to update it from time to time, but the debate around this topic is in constant motion, as you will see in certain recent reflections throughout this text.)

Although German is my mother tongue, I grew up speaking French too, and have lived in French-speaking countries for several years. Out of personal interest, I did a lot of research on gender-inclusive language — even though I’m not a linguist, my communication studies sensitized me to how language can shape our imagination and carry power inequities.

In German

There are different ways of using the so-called “geschlechtergerechte Sprache”, “gendergerechte Sprache” or “inklusive Sprache”. Germans even use the verb “gendern” (literally: to gender) derived from the English noun gender to refer to the process of actively making spoken and written language more inclusive.

What needs to be considered

In the German language, there are three definite articles (der, die, das) and two indefinite ones (ein, eine) that can also change to other forms according to the verb (den, dem, dessen…). Many nouns, especially professions, need to be adjusted, and some adverbs will have to be “gendered”, too.

The options

• Using synonyms: Whenever possible, most Germans willing to use gender-neutral language try to avoid the nouns that remain in the generic masculine. They use newly introduced synonyms like “Lehrende” to replace “Lehrer” (masculine teachers, the default option) and “Lehrerinnen (female teachers) or “Studierende” for “Studenten” (male students, the default option) and “Studentinnen” (female students). Instead of saying “Anwalt” (the male generic version of lawyer), you’d say “Rechtsvertretung” (legal representative). This is very tricky and requires a lot of practice. The website “Geschickt gendern” can help.
• The slash (“Schrägstrich”): This is a rather old version that was mostly used several years ago. You would write the generic male noun, add a slash, a trait, and the female ending. E.g.: “Lehrer/-innen” (teachers), “Baubarbeiter/-in” (construction worker)
• The so-called “Binnen-I”: Again, this is a rather old version. You’d write the female noun and capitalize the “i” to show that you meant both the masculine and feminine versions. E.g. “LehrerInnen”, “die AnwältIn”.
• The bracket: This is comparatively old as well. You’d usually name both the generic masculine noun and the feminine one, but for the article, you’d use a bracket: “ein(e) Lehrer(in)” (a masculine or a feminine teacher). This was for instance used for job offers saying “We are looking for … or …” (both genders). The downside: It makes the female version look like the exception.
• The asterisk (“Gendersternchen” or “Genderstern”): This is perhaps the favorite of the young generation and the queer community, and often used on social media. You write the generic male version, add an asterisk (*) and the female ending: “Lehrer*innen”, “Bauarbeiter*innen”. This is supposed to also include the people who don’t identify themselves as either female or male.
• The colon (“Gender-Doppelpunkt”): is used just like the asterisk, e.g., “Lehrer:innen” or “Bauarbeiter:innen”. Some people prefer it, as word processors like Word might split up the syllables of a word with an asterisk (so a line might end with “Lehrer*” which looks strange), but a word with a colon and no space will not be subject to automatic hyphenation. A disadvantage is that the colon is easily overlooked by people with a visual impairment.
• The underscore (“Gender Gap”): This works like the asterisk and the colon, e.g., “Lehrer_innen” and “Bauarbeiter_innen”, and has the same function.
• Naming both: For pupils, you would say “zwei Schülerinnen und Schüler” (two female and male students). The downside is the ambiguity: Are we talking about two female AND two male students, or two in total? This is a version to make gender-neutral language less obvious, but also less inclusive (it’s still binary, there is no “in-between”, in opposition to, e.g., the underscore). It’s mostly used by organizations or people who are afraid of radical change but aware of the debate about inclusiveness. I experienced this when working for the online editing team of a German NGO in 2019 — but when I last checked in 2023, they had started using the colon on their website.
• “Entgendern”: This means to de-gender and was long a pretty unknown method. I stumbled upon it in 2021 thanks to the science slam of an Austrian linguist. It was first invented by the Austrian performance artist Phettberg and works by abstaining from the female “die” and the male “der” by using the neutral “das” and attaching “-y” to the end of every noun. The reader becomes “das Lesy” (not “die/der Leser”), the smoker “das Rauchy” (not “die/der Raucher”). It’s pretty hilarious when you first hear about it, although Germans already commonly use this form for certain words, like “Azubi” (trainee) and a bit more rarely “Studi” (student). I have friends who even started employing words like “Mitbewohni” (flatmate) and “Freundis” (friends) in all of their conversations, which seems to have become more widespread.

How I do it in German

Whenever I write a German text, be it academic or not, I try to choose synonyms for generic nouns, and I use the asterisk (*) for words where I cannot find a synonym or where the synonym sounds too strange to me. I agree that especially for foreigners, it can be hard to know which gender-inclusive form of writing they want to use. Underscore, slash, asterisk, naming both versions? I’m sorry, guys (and women and everybody else), it’s complicated.

They/them

There is no third pronoun such as the English “they”. We only have “sie/ihr” (female) and “er/ihn/ihm” (male) — the neutral “es/ihn/ihm” is usually not used for people. If a person identifies as non-binary, a German would be more comfortable avoiding the pronoun and just saying the name all the time: “Joe hat gesagt…, Hast du Joe gefragt?, Sag mal bitte Joe…” (Joe said, Did you ask Joe?, Please tell Joe…).

Official documents in Germany

More and more institutions and organizations make an active effort to be inclusive. The accommodation and student office of many universities used to be called “Studentenwerk” and were rebaptized “Studierendenwerk” in most cases.

A “third gender” was introduced by the end of 2018 in Germany. All official documents now have to contain not only the genders male and female, but also the third gender “divers” (various/other) for intersexual or nonbinary people. Therefore, nobody has to worry about choosing one of the binary genders when they simply don’t identify with it.

In French

The “écriture inclusive” (inclusive writing), also called “langage épicène” or “langage neutre”, heavily relies on adding dots to words.

What needs to be considered

Here’s why many people find it hard to learn French: Not only are there two definite and indefinite articles (le, la and un, une), but nouns, adverbs, and adjectives need to be adjusted, too. This grammatical agreement is called “accord”. For instance, “Toutes ces belles femmes noires” means “All these beautiful Black women” while “Tous ces beaux hommes noirs” translates to “All these beautiful Black men”. See how much needs to be changed according to the gender of a person?

In France just like in English, “homme” (man) can also be used to refer to humanity as a whole. Human rights are called “droits de l’Homme” (Man’s rights). To be really inclusive, you should write “droits humains” (human rights).

Options

• Naming both: This can be quite long and exhausting to read. Remember the above-mentioned example about “all these beautiful Black women and men”: In French, you’d also have to repeat all, beautiful and Black. It would become a lengthy sentence. In other cases, however, it can work.
• Using synonyms or rephrasing things: This is an option in French as well. For our example, we could say “Toutes ces belles personnes noires” — All these beautiful Black people.
• The · in the middle (“point médian”): I opted for this one for some of my academic assignments. It’s the most modern option that has been introduced because this specific dot hasn’t had any usage in French so far. It’s like a blank page that can be used to do justice to inclusive language. Its difficulty is the availability on your keyboard: You’ll probably search in vain and have to google it every time, copy-paste it, or define a shortcut. Its usage is not easy, since it’s based on the idea that female and male versions are written out in the same word. “Tout·e·s” would be the plural version of “all” that comprises the female “toutes” and the male “tous”. It’s more difficult when both versions differ: “un nouveau patron” (a new male boss) and “une nouvelle patronne” (a new female boss). To include both, you’d have to write “un·e nouv·eau·elle patron·ne”. For foreigners, this makes French much more complicated than it already is. I personally use this guide.
• The normal period: This one is easier to use than the fancy ·, and employed in the same manner. Many of my French friends use it, e.g. in social media captions. One example is “Cher.e.s ami.e.s” which means Dear (female and male) friends.

They/them

Recently, some people have started using “iel”, the contraction of “il” (he) and “elle” (she). It works for written and spoken French.

Official documents in France

Inclusive language is a controversial topic in the Fifth Republic — and has been since approximately 2017. It was in that year that former prime minister Edouard Philippe managed to make the French Council of State ban the gender-inclusive language from official documents. Nevertheless, the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo has been using and encouraging inclusive language with the “·” on the website of the Parisian municipality for several years. In February 2021, another French deputy suggested the legal interdiction of inclusive language. The debate was revived in October 2023 by yet another law proposal by the French Senate.

On both sides of the river Rhine, people work on solutions to include individuals of all genders into their languages, so that the masculine isn’t seen as “default” or neutral anymore. It often feels to me like English is a more inclusive language by default, but I’m confident that innovative solutions can be found and adopted in most other languages.

Especially if those two languages are not your mother tongue, I think you shouldn’t feel guilty for not always applying gender-inclusive language. In my French bachelor’s thesis, I included a short explanation of why I didn’t use gender-inclusive language even though I find it important.

© Annika Wappelhorst 2021, last updated in February 2024

More from me:

Learn to Speak French Like a Native Speaker

Let’s Talk About the Gender of the Authors You Read