Time to ship out gendered language?

A maritime museum in Scotland recently taking down signage describing ships as ‘she’ — a long seafaring tradition — because of protests by gender activists is bound to have repercussions in other spheres. Of course, the naval issue has been practically settled as even Lloyd’s List, the 250-year-old weekly shipping publication, scuppered that tradition back in 2002 and now calls all vessels ‘it’. But what still lurks below the Plimsoll line is the fact that many languages attach gender to nouns, including boats and ships. The real battle lies there rather than on museum signages. When it comes to English, that ship has actually already sailed — it has swapped she (for vessels and even countries) for ‘it’ quite willingly.

Most Scandinavian languages are neutral anyway, but others such as French and Spanish would require considerable sail trimming in order to become neutral. And their speakers may not be amenable to such drastic course corrections. India is on an uneven keel on the gender issue in languages, with several presenting non-native speakers with a daunting task of internalising whether tables and trees, cups to shoes are masculine or feminine, and framing sentences accordingly. If this new politically correct-speak move provides a solution, it might be smoother sailing for new speakers of many languages.