'Françaises, Français': Why the French language need not be so sexist

[MineralMan]

60. Languages change constantly, through usage.

They tend not to change, however, through prescriptive rules. American English, for example, in 1776, sounded somewhat different, used different spelling, and more. However, the language of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence is easily understood in 2021 by Americans.

On the other hand, word meanings have changed, or not changed. "All men are created equal" is generally understood as meaning "all human beings are created equal." However, in a historical sense, women and men were most definitely not treated equally at the time those words were written. The writers of the Declaration could have written, "All people are created equal," but they did not write it that way. They did not envision equality between men and women. So, we have a misunderstanding of word meanings and historical intentions.

As English developed from being a primarily Germanic language, it lost its inflective nature. Since English absorbed words from French and other languages, the rules of those other languages did not fit into English usage, so the inflections slowly faded away. We still have plurals like "oxen," as remainders of earlier roots. Pigs are animals. Pork is meat. Swine is an animal classification and is both singular and plural.

Usage changes languages. English is a pidgin or creole language, really, It is a loose assemblage of words, grammar, and other factors from many languages that works best as a non-inflected language. People spoke it as they spoke it, and that became what the language is, over time.

Non-gendered pronouns will emerge with usage, but it will take a very long time for them to become universally used by everyone in the same way. Until then, they will sound awkward to our ears and violate the "rules" we have absorbed through learning the language from childhood. A couple of hundred years from now, we will think nothing of that, and the language will have changed through usage.

I can read Chaucer's English. I cannot read the English of Beowulf without struggling. We all can read Shakespeare's English, but many people find that English to be a bit of a slog as well. We understand that "choose" was spelled "chuse" by our nation's founders, but it looks odd to us now. The letter we now know as "f" used to look very different. Once we know that, we can read freely, but it can be confusing until we know that.

Languages change very slowly. It takes generations for them to change universally. It's interesting, but only academically, really.