For years France’s leading body on the French language the Académie Française has been fighting off calls to include feminine versions of job titles in its dictionaries, under the premise that it would "lead to proposals contrary to the spirit of the French language". They argue that their previous reluctance was primarily due to the fact that the wrong feminine versions were being used. For them, the incorrect use of unofficially coined feminine job nouns such as professeure (instead of the only approved and masculine version professeur), recteure (feminine for superintendent), ingénieure (f. engineer) and procureure (f. prosecutor) “are contrary to the rules and are real barbaric acts”. For the most part these newly included feminine versions in L'Académie's online dictionary are easily formed by just adding an –e or –ne to the end of the masculine version, such as préfèt/e, informaticien/ne, deputé/e or procureur/e. Others feminine job titles require the suffix “trice” to be added to the end, such as acupuncteur/acupunctrice.

Source: The Local February 20, 2019 11:26 UTC