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Both Portuguese (Pt.) and Spanish (Sp.) have gendered nouns of masculine or feminine gender - they have no neuter gender. In both languages, feminine nouns often end in ''-a'' while masculine nouns often end in ''-o''. As in other Romance languages, masculine form of nouns and pronouns are generally used to refer to a group of both males and females, or to someone of unknown gender. Advocates of gender-neutral language modification consider this to be sexist and favor new ways of writing and speaking. Activists against sexism in language are also concerned about words where the feminine form has a different (usually less prestigious) meaning. == Traditional Spanish and Portuguese orthography regarding genders == In both languages, the masculine is often marked with the suffix ''-o'' and it is generally easy to make a feminine noun from a masculine one by changing the ending -''o'' to -''a'': ''cirujano, cirujana'' (Sp., surgeon; m./f.); ''advogado, advogada'' (Pt., lawyer, m./f.); ''médico, médica'' (both languages, physician, m./f.) If the masculine version ends with a consonant, the feminine is typically formed by adding an ''-a'' to it as well: ''el doctor, la doctora'' (Sp., m./f.); ''o doutor'', ''a doutora'' (Pt., m./f.). However, not all nouns ending in ''-o'' are masculine, and not all nouns ending in ''-a'' are feminine: * Singular nouns ending in ''-o'' or ''-a'' are epicene (invariable) in some cases: ''testigo'' (Sp., witness, whatever gender); (Pt., witness, whatever gender), (Pt., cashier, whatever gender). * Nouns with the epicene ending -''ista'', such as ''dentista, ciclista, turista, especialista'' (dentist, cyclist, tourist, specialist; either male or female in both languages) are almost always invariable. One exception is ''modisto'' (Sp., male fashion designer), which was created as a counterpart to ''modista'' (Sp., fashion designer, or clothes maker); in Portuguese, both of these terms are nonexistent for a professional ( is used for fashion designer of whatever gender, while would be pejorative since its ubiquitous sense is for someone who i.e. has crazy ideas and actions and/or readily adopts silly fads). * Some nouns ending in ''-a'' refer only to men: ''cura'', that is "priest" in Spanish, a word which ends in ''-a'' but is grammatically masculine, for a profession held in Roman Catholic tradition only by men; this is also the case of the most common Brazilian homophobic slurs directed at males. Invariable words in Portuguese and Spanish are often derived from the Latin participles ending in ''-ans'' and ''-ens'' (''-antem'' and ''-entem'' in the accusative case): ''representante; comerciante; estudante ''(Pt.)'', estudiante ''(Sp.). Some words that normatively epicene, can have an informal feminine ending with '-a'. Example: ''la jefe'' (Sp.), ''a chefe'' (Pt.) (boss, normative ); ''jefa'' (Sp.), ''chefa'' (Pt.) (). The same happens with ''cliente'' (client), although ''clienta'' seems to appear more often in Spanish than in Portuguese. There remain a few cases where the appropriate gender is uncertain: * ''Presidenta'' used to be "the president's wife", but there have been several women presidents in Latin American republics, and in modern usage the word means mainly a female president. Some feel that ''presidente'' can be treated as invariable, given that it ends in ''-ente'', but others prefer to use a different feminine form. * ''El policía'' (Sp., the policeman). Since ''la policía'' means "the police force", the only useful feminine counterpart is ''la mujer policía'' (the police woman). (In Portuguese, the translations for policeman/policewoman, or simply , can be used for whatever gender; high-variant Brazilian Portuguese gives preference to the earlier – also intends for the police force as a whole –, while low-variant Brazilian Portuguese, especially the most basilectal vernacular, gives preference to the latter – the police force is known as "lawmen", , or for short, and more commonly, simply "the men", .) * ''Juez'' (Sp., male judge). Many new judges in Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries are women. Since the ending of ''juez'' is uncommon in Spanish, some prefer being called ''la juez'' while others have created the neologism ''jueza''. Common nouns ending in ''-z'' are usually feminine, as in the cases of ''vez'' and ''paz''. (In Portuguese, ''juíza'' is formed normally from ''juiz'', male judge.) 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Gender neutrality in Spanish and Portuguese」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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