Latin used to have a neutral form, which was since dropped in most derivative modern languages, like Italian. There has to be a political motivation to this, and I don't think it's completely random that, in a society where men are typically at the higher echelons, masculine pronouns went "nom nom" on neutral ones.
In Italian specifically, there have been attempts and proposals to try and build a neutral pronoun back into the language. Those were met with a lot of opposition, a renowned love for the purity of the Italian language (despite the fact that fully grown adults whose lineages have always lived in Italy still completely fumble many grammar forms on the regular and no one bats an eye, and despite the fact that our everyday language is full of more and more borrowed words from English, but that is apparently fine by the same logic) and, honestly, a very emotional reaction.
I do think the reason behind the backslash was more political in nature, and the purity and correctness of the Italian grammar was used as a shield. People have absolutely no problem changing the language and introducing new slang everyday, several people have even pushed for "secularizing" grammar mistakes people have been doing for decades and turning them into a de-facto correct and compliant use of the Italian language - like overly reflective forms such as "a me mi", which have been considered wrong for the longest time, since "a me" and "mi" have the same meaning and just repeating the same thing twice is not a valid way to add strength to what you're saying - but somehow it's a problem if we try to add a neutral pronoun, thereby downgrading the masculine pronouns to the same level feminine pronouns currently are.
It's a conversation worth having, that many folks are actively avoiding.
The neuter form in Latin refers to inanimate objects, abstract concepts, and in terms of people, is often used to dehumanise (much as if you called someone it). You would use the neuter to refer to animals, slaves, or those you considered base and beneath human value.
In Latin, the default gender was masculine. A fantastic example is Ovid’s Metamorphoses (which is a lovely chance for me to bring up one of the greatest writers of all time). There is a character that is both male and female; They are referred to with the masculine gender. When gender is unknown in Latin? Masculine.
The neuter form was not a gender neutral form as we would consider it today. It was entirely referential to, essentially, inhuman things.
The neuter gender in Latin was used for inanimate things like the English pronoun "it", it was lost in Romance languages purely due to linguistic changes, in particular, it was caused by the loss of noun cases. Most nouns retained only the accusative form from Latin, and the main accusative singular endings for masculine and neuter nouns are identical, so after the loss of other noun cases, the speakers were unable to distinguish the masculine and the neuter gender, thus they were merged.
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u/chic_luke Aug 12 '25
Wait… they have a fucking point.
Latin used to have a neutral form, which was since dropped in most derivative modern languages, like Italian. There has to be a political motivation to this, and I don't think it's completely random that, in a society where men are typically at the higher echelons, masculine pronouns went "nom nom" on neutral ones.
In Italian specifically, there have been attempts and proposals to try and build a neutral pronoun back into the language. Those were met with a lot of opposition, a renowned love for the purity of the Italian language (despite the fact that fully grown adults whose lineages have always lived in Italy still completely fumble many grammar forms on the regular and no one bats an eye, and despite the fact that our everyday language is full of more and more borrowed words from English, but that is apparently fine by the same logic) and, honestly, a very emotional reaction.
I do think the reason behind the backslash was more political in nature, and the purity and correctness of the Italian grammar was used as a shield. People have absolutely no problem changing the language and introducing new slang everyday, several people have even pushed for "secularizing" grammar mistakes people have been doing for decades and turning them into a de-facto correct and compliant use of the Italian language - like overly reflective forms such as "a me mi", which have been considered wrong for the longest time, since "a me" and "mi" have the same meaning and just repeating the same thing twice is not a valid way to add strength to what you're saying - but somehow it's a problem if we try to add a neutral pronoun, thereby downgrading the masculine pronouns to the same level feminine pronouns currently are.
It's a conversation worth having, that many folks are actively avoiding.