Michigan State University: Romance Languages Like French and Spanish Need to be More Inclusive

I know, I know…

I’ve really been hitting the “WTF is this?” topics pretty hard lately. Bear with me… I have to go back to campus in a few weeks, and I’m trying to get these comments out of my system as much as possible. With as much as tuition costs, I don’t really have the time (or patience) to undergo disciplinary action.

In the next chapter of the seemingly never ending war on words, we’ll cover more material on language inclusivity. What makes this different from other “inclusive language guides”? Well… we seem to be targeting foreign languages on a more fundamental level. Love that…

From The College Fix:

Professors in the Romance languages department at Michigan State University should ensure they use “inclusive language” and utilize “social justice resources,” according to a guide currently on a school website.

The Department of Romance and Classical Studies lists resources on how to make languages such as French and Spanish “gender neutral” and how to incorporate “non-binary” pronouns into Italian.

A conservative think tank in Michigan called the guide a “waste” of taxpayer dollars in emailed comments to The College Fix.

“The MSU guide is a ham-handed attempt at regulating language from the top-down (no offense to hams),” Jarret Skorup, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy’s vice president for marketing and communications, told The Fix. “The ‘inclusive language’ guides are often nonsensical and hypocritical – Michigan State University has and continues to violate the suggestions and guidelines.”

A Spanish language resource explains how to use the correct pronouns for “non-binary” people. “The use of inclusive language has become increasingly popular, which is why we are going to talk to you about non-binary pronouns,” the article states.

Some institutions have opposed efforts to revise language to include modern day notions about gender. For example, the French Academy, which aims to protect the language and its history, rejects calls to update French to make it more “inclusive.”

The nearly 400-year-old institution seeks to “maintain standards of literary taste and to establish the literary language.”

The Romance languages department is not the only place Michigan State promotes “inclusive” language. The school’s Brand Studio warns against using terms like “American,” “bunny” and “nickname.”

The Gender and Sexuality section of the guide warns against using terms like “female” (“reduces women to their assumed biological anatomy”), “sex change” (“gender transition” is better) and “nickname.” In this age of gender fluidity and gender pronouns, using “nickname” could “imply that a person’s name is a substitute for their legal name,” as previously reported by The Fix.

Tell me you flunked high school Spanish without telling me you flunked high school Spanish…

That’s the only logical reason I can come up with as to why this is a thing (probably my first mistake). It’s hard to learn a new language. It’s exacerbated by the gender factor, so these morons just want to get rid of the different variations. The test scores are probably in the toilet, and they need to try whatever they can to get them back up so they can keep their jobs…

Seems like a legit argument. At least… more legit than changing an entire language so as not to put boo-boos on anyone’s feelings. English speakers have been doing that for years…

On another note… this seems… kinda xenophobic to me.

We’re not worried about that? Oh… right… that’s not a thing for people to the left of the aisle. Just another variation of the whole “you can’t be a racist if it’s against white people” thing…

Got it.