Gender-neutral GCSE French lessons trigger international row

[IwantToRetire]

British exam board to allow 16-year-olds to use newly coined hybrid pronouns in languages, despite terms not being recognised by countries

The guidance came out in 2024, but comes into force this year, with language exams taking place in June.

The exam board also states that it will recognise “the use of gender-neutral pronouns with feminine or masculine agreement” as well as “students’ use of gender-neutral nouns, whether indicated by adding punctuation, asterisks or using alternative spellings”.

These will be accepted by examiners “even though this usage may not always be recognised by some of the languages academies in certain countries”

Full article https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05/09/gender-neutral-gcse-french-lessons-international-row/

Also at https://archive.is/WAxAu

I'm just baffled by that, they're setting the children up to fail by teaching them a version of French that the French don't speak, even though it won't come up in any exam, that's just bonkers.

"A Pearson spokesman said: “Gender-neutral pronouns are not required as part of Pearson Edexcel GCSE French, German, or Spanish. The specifications require students to learn and be assessed only on the standard masculine and feminine forms used in these languages."

Having wreaked havoc on the English language they're going to re-write all the others languages as well.

So the word ‘amies’ has 2 extra asterisks in - so it’s just the same word with added punctuation thrown in. Then they say as long as they are consistent in written and verbal exams. So is it pronounced differently with the 2 asterisks in? I am totally confused.

use of gender-neutral nouns, whether indicated by adding punctuation, asterisks or using alternative spellings

Whoa. No need to learn the genders of anything! You can just stick asterisks all over the place and compromise on agreements?!

Well, that would've elevated my Bs to As in one fell swoop 😂It would also have meant I spoke my languages worse than a native four-year-old (they're corrected from the moment they utter their first sentence) but, hey - the point of learning other languages is wokeness, not competence. Apparently.

L* monde devient plus foule par jour ...

Unfortunately object words still have their prescribed genders, which I must admit make no sense at all, so you will still have to learn that it's LA table.

But you can (sorry, you should !) now use the made-up "lae" everywhere gender did make sense, because because because.

I'm the mother of a dyslexic French child (and two non dyslexic French children) and this makes me fume.

The arrogance of this ideology breathtaking!

Tout à fait dingue. C’est une blague?? 🤞🏼

This is also being discussed in the GCSE Biology thread (but I can’t figure out how to share that here). And yes it’s insane that the English are now telling the French, Germans and Spanish how to speak their own languages and not accepting it when the French, German and Spanish object. Presumably because objections show how transphobic their languages are. Since it’s no longer 2019 I hope this will be corrected quickly.

Here you are - same organisation - Pearsons - rendering themselves look unprofessional, politically dodgy and incompetent because they can't say no to transactivists they employ.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5527067-gcse-pupils-taught-toilets-provided-by-biological-sex-is-discrimination-according-to-new-gcse-revision-book

There’s an irony in wanting to be “progressive” whilst imposing 19th-century colonialism, linguistically. This irony will no doubt have flown over their they/them têtes.

This smacks of colonialism to me. Outsiders/foreigners deciding on changes to your language - I think it qualifies as that.That's surely a way to fight this rubbish as I can't imagine its proponents wanting to view themselves as colonisers.

If they don’t view invading somebody else’s spaces as colonisation, and ousting somebody else from their designated awards as colonisation, or if they consider such colonisation to be reasonable and justifiable, I don’t think they’re going to be bothered by extending this to somebody else’s language.

But how di you pronounce ex. infirmier/e ? Its not just spelling, its how the word sounds when you speak.
So any student winging it in these exams will not be required to use the language at any level. written or spoken
The whole thing is pointless Gender neutral conneri*

So in the 1990s academics took the language of grammar and applied it to theories about human behavior.

Then in the 2010s students of those academics took the language of that theory and applied to actual human beings.

And now in 2026 the human beings who classify themselves by the theoretical language taken from grammar are changing grammar to match their own fantasy lives.

What next?

To be fair we have had a whole extremely loud group of actual French people pushing this so-called inclusive writing down our throats without being edged on by the English. (Although one might argue that it's definitely American cultural influence).

Fashionable feminists generally adhere to this group, and some but not most actual feminists too (I disagree with them because I 1. don't think it's a way to achieve equality 2. see the detrimental consequences such as confusion for learners or dyslexic people, and the simple ugliness of it) . I don't think they had foreseen that it would be used by TRAs.

Jesus fucking H Christ.

French is hard enough as it is to remember every iteration of pronoun and sense to match the subject let alone this bullshit.

Anyone coming to France and using this would be looked at as totally insane.

L* what now?! 🤦‍♀️

Well, that is generally the approach taken by the French to anyone attempting to use school French on them. The only luck I have had with my own French was in Italy where it helped me converse with an Italian who also had some school French!

@Mix56 Mostly reasonable people within the proponents suggest that infirmier.e would be pronounced "infirmier ou infirmière" and it's a way to shorten it in writing. Less reasonable people make absolute fools of themselves (I've heard the equivalent of infirmier-heu-reu-ss in videos by activists)

I've been teaching French for 21 years and don't teach all this. If any pupils ask me I tell them some people do the adding in a full stop thing etc but it hasn't really caught on. Then I get on with my lesson.

We've not had that at all.

Indeed whevener we start speaking and they clock our bad French they start speaking in English or call an English speaker over. Always very helpful.

The most satisfying thing ever was speaking in French to a French person and them NOT switching to English and just speaking back as normal.

How much easier it would be to learn French and Italian without gendered nouns!

Sometimes I want to scream "this makes no difference at all to the meaning" when I see a red mark for getting the gender wrong.

I learnt Turkish for a while and that's wonderful - every grammar rule actually makes a difference to the meaning and there are very few exceptions. None of this "rule applies except when the third letter of the word is a t" randomness which applies in other languages.

Let's be fair: this is something invented by French people, not arbitrarily imposed as part of English "colonialism". It's not accepted by the Académie française because they are extremely conservative. It has as much in common with English feminist language campaigns of the 1970s ("chair" instead of "chairman" etc) than it does with modern-day gender bollocks.

Apparently it's like teaching children that the English for women is 'womxn'.

Advised by Stonewall. Everyone involved in this should be sacked.

It's teaching children made up words that would see them ridiculed if they were ever used in real life.

Complete and utter madness imho. More than a step too far in wokeness.

In German language the gender of nouns isn't always fixed, a noun can change gender and even change meaning.
So the gender signifies meaning, without it, the word has no meaning or at best a confusing meaning which is at complete odds of the German language.

They have words and phrases for every context, their language doesn't allow for ambiguities or guesswork.

And this isn't to say they are not progressive in ideology. You only need to spend half a day in Berlin to know how progressive and liberal the people can be.

So if they don't have issues with their language, who are we to try and change it?

Absolute madness and ignorance, it's embarrassing.