Editing Gender neutrality in English (section)

{{short description|Linguistic feature in the English language}}
[[Gender-neutral language]] is language that avoids assumptions about the social [[gender]] or biological [[sex]] of people referred to in speech or writing. In contrast to most other [[Indo-European languages]], English does not retain [[grammatical gender]] and most of its nouns, adjectives and pronouns are therefore not gender-specific. In most other Indo-European languages, nouns are grammatically masculine (as in [[Spanish language|Spanish]] ''el humano'') or grammatically feminine (as in [[French language|French]] ''la personne''), or sometimes grammatically neuter (as in [[German language|German]] ''das Mädchen''), regardless of the actual gender of the referent.

In addressing [[Grammatical gender#Natural gender|natural gender]], English speakers use linguistic strategies that may reflect the speaker's attitude to the issue or the perceived [[Acceptance#Social acceptance|social acceptability]] of such strategies.