This is serious ... but I still thought it had a place in the humour section. Copyright Times Newspapers.
Welsh told to give up sex for equality
BY ROBIN YOUNG
THE Equal Opportunities Commission has managed to
de-sex the Welsh language.
The commission asked a leading linguist and academic to
report on avoiding sex discrimination in Welsh, which has
nouns of masculine and feminine gender, with adjectives and
pronouns varied to agree with them. Her recommendations
are to become the basis of a set of guidelines for employers,
public utilities and local authorities.
The gender-ridden nature of the language has brought
problems for employers and public bodies anxious to avoid
infringing the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 while observing
the requirements of the Welsh Language Act 1993. They
have to use Welsh in all public communications, but equally
have to avoid anything that might be considered sexist.
Since even the Welsh for manager (rheolwr) implies that the
person involved is a man, this can be very tricky indeed. A
secretary (ysgrifenyddes) is always assumed to be female,
and a coal miner (glowr) male.
Now Dr Gwenllian Awbrey of the University of Wales,
Cardiff, has provided a solution. She has shown how to
avoid the pitfalls of the legislation by using the plural or both
male and female forms in job adverts and other material. Val
Feld, director of the Equal Opportunity Commission in
Wales, said: "One simple way is to refer to someone as 'the
successful candidate' rather than he or she."
The commission has been examining the impact of "gender
specific" advertisements, finding that the language often
complicates matters. For instance while a doctor (meddyg)
in Welsh can be either male or female, an athro is a male
teacher while a female teacher is athrawes. Though meddyg
refers to both men and women, it is always of masculine
gender.
To get round secretarial discrimination, Dr Awbrey suggests
advertising for staff ysgrifenyddol (secretarial staff) or a
swydd ysgrifenyddol (secretarial post). An alternative, she
suggests, is a neologism to denote a male secretary:
ysgrifennydd.
Similarly, a gyrrwr (driver, male) could be partnered by a
new female equivalent, gyrwraig.
Dr Awbrey's other suggestions include using plural rather
than the singular to allow reference to mixed groups of men
and women without needing to specify their sex.
"The grammar is on the whole sensitive to gender only in the
singular," Dr Awbrey notes. "The plural takes very little note
of gender."
© Times Newspapers. 18/8/1997.