Gender-neutral language in Portuguese is a recent strand of demands for greater
gender equality and
social inclusion between
men,
women and
non-binary individuals. It can be divided into
inclusive or non-
sexist language, and
non-binary or
neuterlanguage or neolanguage. Inclusive language aims to use existing words to include all genders, while neuter language uses new or modified words to accomplish this.[1]
Context
Most words in Portuguese have one grammatical gender, the masculine or the feminine. The creation of
gender-neutral terms and removal of gender
markers aims to make non-binary people feel included.[2][3]
One of the proposal is using
metonymy,
periphrasis and
circumlocution following
agreement, sometimes including the usage of
people-first language, whereas the word pessoa (
Portuguese: person) has
feminine grammatical gender with no
natural gendermarkedness,[4][5][6] similar with the usage of no pronouns in English, a form of gender omission.[7] Many nouns and adjectives are referred as "uniforms", which are words that can be used to refer to people of any gender, they are not necessarily neutral but are useful for an inclusive language.[8] This proposal is known as gender-inclusive language or gender-neutral
syntax.[9][10]
-x and @
Gendered suffixes, specially ⟨-o/-a⟩, are replaced with
at sign⟨-@⟩ or ⟨-x⟩ to neutralize words, such as in alun@s (students) and todxs (everyone).[11][12][13] These forms are not pronounceable, they are meant to be graphical, being criticized for not being readable by
screen readers and seen as potentially
ableist.[14][15] The use of at signs are recorded since 1990s, such as in words "Unid@s" (United).[16][17]
Neopronouns
Portuguese
neopronouns are a gender-neutral approach to
pronominal reference to living things, especially humans. They are neopronouns, i.e. a newly developed, intentional innovation of language (as opposed to natural
language change).[18]
Depending on the ungendered neopronoun one identifies with (e.g. elu),[19][20][15] there are various suggestions. Elo, for example, is recorded since
1970s to describe
travestis.[21] See the below table with suggestions for various
inflections of some neopronouns:[22]
Neolanguage (
Portuguese: neolinguagem) stands for
neologisticdesinences,
articles,
nouns and
declensions along with
pronouns.[29][30] A form of neolanguage can be expressed with the words amigues (friends), psicólogue (psychologist), and linde (pretty) for example, using ⟨-e⟩ suffix. Usually, not using the article is recommended, however there are proposals for articles, such as u(s) and ê(s).[3] Neolinguistic terms can be used for groups of multiple genders or non-binary individuals, for example.[31]