Well that’s pretty much how Spanish works. We have estudiante but that normally ends with -e so we’ll use alumno as an example:
El alumno - single masculine
La alumna - single feminine
Los alumnos - multiple masculine or mixed group. As long as there’s at least one guy its masculine
Las alumnas - multiple feminine
So saying something like Les alumnes (seems like French lol) can sound more neutral than Los alumnos despite not being officially correct because los has an implied masculine connotation
Still, it would break grammar rules similar to the -x ending, right? Although from my limited Spanish knowledge the -x ending would require some explanation on how to pronounce it, just like the German *-variant. The -e might be more intuitive though.
But from what I’ve seen on the internet, by far the vast majority of criticism of the -x variant are immediately followed by some right-wing talking point, which is why I’m somewhat cautious about more appropriate criticism.
In German, another variant, though considerably less popular, for referring to people in a gender neutral fashion is by “Englishifying” it and referring to everyone the same by appending a -y to the word stem.
Singular male/female/non-binary student? That’s a Studenty now. A group of students? Studentys.
I hate to say it but this is my favorite variant because it gets rid of gender altogether in a concise way and sounds silly. Still, it too violates a shitton of rules - but what are rules, if not meant to be broken?
Well that’s pretty much how Spanish works. We have estudiante but that normally ends with -e so we’ll use alumno as an example:
El alumno - single masculine
La alumna - single feminine
Los alumnos - multiple masculine or mixed group. As long as there’s at least one guy its masculine
Las alumnas - multiple feminine
So saying something like Les alumnes (seems like French lol) can sound more neutral than Los alumnos despite not being officially correct because los has an implied masculine connotation
Still, it would break grammar rules similar to the -x ending, right? Although from my limited Spanish knowledge the -x ending would require some explanation on how to pronounce it, just like the German *-variant. The -e might be more intuitive though.
But from what I’ve seen on the internet, by far the vast majority of criticism of the -x variant are immediately followed by some right-wing talking point, which is why I’m somewhat cautious about more appropriate criticism.
In German, another variant, though considerably less popular, for referring to people in a gender neutral fashion is by “Englishifying” it and referring to everyone the same by appending a -y to the word stem.
Singular male/female/non-binary student? That’s a Studenty now. A group of students? Studentys.
I hate to say it but this is my favorite variant because it gets rid of gender altogether in a concise way and sounds silly. Still, it too violates a shitton of rules - but what are rules, if not meant to be broken?