The RAE on inclusive language: “The use of the ‘e’ is useless”

The Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) clarified, once again, its position regarding inclusive language and the use of the letter “e” to avoid referring only to men or women. On this occasion, he did so by responding to a request on the @RAEinforma twitter account, where with the hashtag #dudaRAE users can consult with the institution to raise concerns regarding the appropriate use of the language.

“Saying girls or everyone in exchange for boys and everyone is silly?” The RAE replied that it considered it “useless” and “unaware of the morphology of Spanish”.

“The use of the letter” e “as a supposedly inclusive gender mark is foreign to the morphology of Spanish, and unnecessary, since the grammatical masculine (” boys “) already fulfills this function as an unmarked term in the ‘gender opposition’, published the Royal Spanish Academy.

#RAEconsultas The use of the letter “e” as a supposedly inclusive gender mark is foreign to the morphology of Spanish, and unnecessary, since the grammatical masculine (“boys”) already fulfills this function as an unmarked term in the gender opposition.

– RAE (@RAEinforma) December 14, 2020

Of the RAE, they have long considered that the use “It is not widespread so far”, although they do not exclude that as the use becomes more widespread, it may be incorporated.

Regarding a possible incorporation of the “e”, the director of the RAE, Santiago Muñoz Machado, explained some time ago in an interview with this media that the Academy “cannot do more than check how people speak”. “But to be able to incorporate a new form of expression, we first need to check the frequency of use and then this diffusion of use,” says Muñoz Machado.

“Inclusive language will only be when its use becomes general”

In this sense, the head of the Royal Spanish Academy also clarified that “this does not mean that the RAE is also made aware of the growing demands for greater inclusion and greater visibility of women”.

“We’ve been doing things since they were wrong that can be improved upon, like a lot of definitions that are still in the dictionary that started with the word ‘man’, ‘man who’; and they have been replaced by “person” or by another figure which does not centralize the definition so much or which does not masculinize the definition “, he explained.

The last words accepted

On November 24, the RAE updated the digital version 23.4 of the Dictionary of the Spanish Language with several new words and several of them are related to the coronavirus.

In total, there are 2557 new words among which “COVID” stands out, with all capital letters, which have caught the eye because this word can be called “COVID” or “COVID”, also include “coronavirus”, “deconfinement” or “quarantine”.

“Coronavirus”, “trolling”, “emoji”, “deconfine” or “faláfel” are some of the new words that have been incorporated in update 23.4 of the “Dictionary of the Spanish language”. Academic Paz Battaner recounted it during a press conference: https://t.co/aqic08N6zu. pic.twitter.com/SSkLdHfIKU

– RAE (@RAEinforma) November 24, 2020

As for COVID, it is defined as “acute respiratory syndrome produced by a coronavirus”. The director of the DLE, Sun Battaner, details that COVID, which has two grammatical genres, can be used interchangeably with “el” or “la”.

Other words such as “Intifada”, “fascist”, “parafascist”, “pro-life”, “alpha male”, “trolling” and “emoji”, among others, have also been added.

AG / MC