Transcript of the video

This is what we call inclusive writing. We include everyone, men and women, but also people who don't really identify with either the masculine or feminine genders.

Bonjour tout le monde. I hope you're well and in good shape for this new French video. Today, we're going to talk about a new pronoun that appeared in French a while ago.

I'm telling you about it today because a subscriber asked me in a comment what the pronoun "iel" meant. Maybe you've already heard this word in French.

Before you start, don't forget to activate subtitles if you need them, and don't forget to like the video if you like it.

So today, we're not really going to do a real French lesson. The aim of this video is really to explain a little about this pronoun and the issues surrounding it, so that you'll be able to understand it if you see it written somewhere.

This pronoun "iel" appeared around 2010, especially in LGBT circles.

A few months ago, Le Petit Robert dictionary added this word to its online dictionary. It sparked off a lot of debate and controversy, not least among politicians who weren't at all happy that the French language was being tampered with and that a new pronoun was being added.

This pronoun is a contraction of "he" and "she", or "iel". We're seeing more and more use of this pronoun on social networks, for example, or in LGBT circles, as I was saying, and more and more committed associations are using it.

This is what we call inclusive writing, which means that we include everyone, men and women, but also people who don't really identify with either the masculine or feminine genders.

It becomes a neutral pronoun. In general, in the singular we use iel i,e,l and in the plural i, e, l, s. But there are other spellings, for example with l,l,e.

So it's used to refer to a person of any gender. That's how it's defined in this dictionary, Le Robert. In this video, we're not here to debate whether it's right or wrong.

Above all, what I want to do is explain it to you so that you can understand it. As I often say, language evolves according to people's needs and customs. This is also what the director of this dictionary said when she chose to include this word.

She explained that the dictionary team was just there to report on usage, but not to give an opinion, or judge whether it's a good or bad thing that this new word has appeared.

In particular, I read in an article that in France, among young people aged between 18 and 30, there were more than 22% who felt neither really male nor really female.

This survey was carried out in 2020 by Ifop. It's a really big polling institute in France.

You see, that's what the director of the dictionary is explaining: we can see that more and more people need this.

So there are two cases where the pronoun "iel" is used. The first, as I think you've gathered by now, is for people who consider themselves non-binary.

I don't know if you've heard this term before, but as I was saying, it refers to people who don't really identify with either the masculine or feminine gender.

I don't know if you know the actress Ellen Page. Some time ago, she decided that she wanted to be called Eliott Page and referred to by the pronouns "he" or "they".

"He" in English is the masculine pronoun and "they" is either the plural pronoun, but today, and increasingly, it can be used as a neutral singular pronoun.

So, just like "iel" in French for people who don't identify with either gender.

In English, the use of "they", which is already "ils" in the plural, can lead to confusion, especially when translating English texts into French, Spanish, Italian, whatever the language.

Because it hasn't really sunk in yet that it can be used as a neutral singular pronoun, there can be mistakes in translations.

With "iel" at least, since it's a brand-new pronoun, there's no confusion with anything else.

There are also others that have appeared, such as "celleux" to refer to those. It's a contraction of the two, but it hasn't yet entered the dictionary.

But you see, it's the same process. That's the first case, as we've seen. So, for people who don't consider themselves one gender or another.

There's a second case where it can be used, and that's when you don't want to put a particular gender forward, when you're talking about a group of people.

For example, if I say the nurses treated many people during the Covid crisis, if I were to replace with a pronoun, the rule in French would be that I should say ils ont soigné de beaucoup de gens.

"Iel" makes it clear that there were also women who worked. It's a bit more egalitarian.

You're probably familiar with this rule in French. If I'm talking about 100 women and one man, the masculine will always take precedence in the grammar.

So, if I say Sandra, Vanessa, Elisa, Josephine and Marc went to the movies.

If I had to use a pronoun, I'd say they, even if there were a lot more girls. This rule can pose a bit of a problem, because when you're a child, at school, to help you remember this grammar rule, we often say in France: remember that the masculine always takes precedence over the feminine.

So there are a lot of people, especially feminists, who criticize this phrase, this formula, because it can be said that in the French language, the masculine is always more important, but it can also give the impression that in society, women are less important than men.

So people who want to make things a little more equal may want to use this pronunciation iel, inclusive writing, as a reminder that women are present too.

There's the pronoun, but in terms of grammar, the agreement of an adjective or a past participle, we haven't really established any rules, so this pronoun is just a first step.

So, as I was saying here, I'm explaining it to you because I've been asked the question and it's really so that you understand if you see this word "iel" on social networks, for example, because that's where we see it a lot.

But you, when you write, when you take exams, really stick to classical grammar and classical pronouns.

So I'm really talking about an ongoing evolution of the language, but it's not at all validated by the Académie française, it's not really something that's necessarily used in everyday life.

It's still used in certain circles. So as I was saying, I'll explain it to you more than you can, so that you can understand it if you see this expression.

That's it for today, I hope you've enjoyed this video, which is a little different from what I usually offer, and that you've learned something.

Let me know in the comments if you too have seen this type of evolution in your language. I always find it interesting to see how these evolutions play out in other languages.

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