I know, I know. It’s complicated, and maybe impossible. A lot needs to change to make this easy, and I’m certainly in no position to revolutionize the French language.
I need to add French pronouns to my email signature. I don’t necessarily need to use them, but ideally I could explain to someone how to use them in a sentence.
“Iel” isn’t perfect, but it’s the most popular right now. That’s good enough for me.
I’m confused about the rest. Can anyone give me guidance on the most popular Iel equivalent of [il/le/lui] and [elle/la/elle]?
Is there a good website where I can see the pronouns in use, that isn’t a style guide about pronouns?
Thanks for stopping by :)
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I have no source for you, just personal experience. In my small circles (irl and online) which are not statistically significant, we usually use :
- “iel” for third person singular, used the same way as “they” in the singular form
- “ellui” also used for the third person by someone who wanted the feminin “elle” to come first
- “ol” is also used for the third person, mostly by people who want to get rid of the binary “il” and “elle” sounds of “iel”
- “elleux” for the third person plural, used the same way as “they” in its usual sense
Maybe this wikipedia page could be useful ?
Just FYI: from my experience as a native French speaker and a French resident, these neopronouns have a hard time existing outside militant and lgbtqi+ circles. Our most popular media (which are right-wing/conservative) regularly paint them as a problem, an attack on the “mothertongue” etc. and I’ve faced violent reactions from people I gave my pronouns to.
Kudos to you for including them in your signature !
Edit: typos.
aw yay I made this page!
Thank you so much for making it :)
Thanks a ton for this, it’s really helpful! I’ve been conflicted because intellectually I like things like “ol” or “ul” more than “iel” for the reason you described, but I’m not strong enough in French to be a good advocate for them. “Iel” feels easiest, right now.
Would “elleux” replace all uses of third-person plural, or only those including non-binary people?
Regarding your FYI: Sorry you’ve dealt with that, it’s so frustrating!! It’s so hard to know what approach will help people understand, and I can see why a lot of people don’t bother. Thanks for working to make things better :)
Happy to help :)
Iel clearly has the most tractiin, enough to get included in one french dictionary recently.
“Elleux” does actually replace all uses of 3rd person plural.
Thanks for your support :)
I’ve seen non binary people using [iel/ellui], but to be honest the object pronoun “ellui” is much less popular than the subject pronoun “iel”.
(I can’t find a reliable source on that)
Thanks! It’s really hard to get a feel for what people actually use and recognize. There are resources saying “here are 20 NB pronouns that exist”, which is great, but they’re not helpful to someone without a fairly sophisticated level of fluency. Perhaps [iel/ellui/lea] is an option, despite my dislike of the gender-combo construction.
my friends and I tend to use iel/iel/lae more, for simplicity. it’s technically correct as well :)
Hi! We actually tend more to use il, elle and iel, rather than il/lui, elle/elle, and iel/iel, because as you can see from this sentence, it’s pretty useless to add the accusative form which only changes for “il”. For instance, my email signature and what I have here only references il. For convenience I put they, il here, but in my email signature I have: “they/them, il”.
And yes, non-binary options in English are underwhelming to say the least, which is why I use il and not a neutral alternative :(
English is pretty good when it comes to nonbinary/gender neutral language compared to French, right? I mean neopronouns aren’t that unheard of and we still have They/them being grammatically accepted
Yep, and your grammar is largely ungendered. Our nouns and adjectives almost all are, so it’s really hard to avoid gendering people too.
Spanish has the same problem. Even if a word is gender neutral (e.g. president) you still have to use a gendered pronoun for it. And some politicians are even trying to mske that word, one of the few that are not gendered, be gendered.
Thank you SO much for your answers here! And for writing that awesome Wikipedia page, which I somehow hadn’t seen before. A few follow up questions, if you don’t mind:
- I found a dropdown somewhere with [iel/iel/iel]. This is a mistake, right? “Je iel connais” feels wrong. It should be something like “Je lae connais”?
- You may have answered this already, but what’s a good way to present my pronouns that says "I prefer non-binary, but I don’t want to torture you so feel free to use il or elle? Something like [iel ou il, lui, le]? Useful point about accusative being unneccessary, but I’m in a situation where other people are adding it so I think I probably need to include it…
- Definitely wrong!
- I’d say (iel préféré, elle/il acceptés) might do the trick?
