The Spanish say that somebody ‘has no hairs on the tongue,’ meaning that they don’t mince their words… Outspoken author, Pérez-Reverte evidently has none on his.

“I thought that you couldn’t fit one more idiot into Spain, but it turns out that you can,” he commented on his twitter account upon hearing about Basque politicians who had decided to only use the feminine grammatical gender in their speech.

Rogelio Crespo and Luz María Bulnes announced that they would only use the feminine gender as “one step more in the struggle against sexist language.”

Now, it is worth pointing out two things: firstly, Pérez-Reverte sits on the Real Academia Española and is a stickler for grammatical abuse and eats politically correct politicians for breakfast.

Secondly, our dear politicians are driving everybody mad by saying “Trabajadores y trabajadoras” when the former would suffice, as it is both masculine and neutral. Put another way, “amigos” covers both male and females friends, and not just masculine ones.

So, these two politicians in their quest to end “sexist” use of the Spanish language, are moving away from the completely ridiculous doubling up of nouns to the other extreme of using only the feminine gender to cover both the masculine and feminine forms.

Just to annoy Dave, the Editor, I shall now explain briefly how it works.

You can say, “Mis amigos Paco y Manolo,” or you can say, “Mis amigas, Conchi y Patricia.” Finally, you can say, “Mis amigos, Paco y Conchi,” because the masculine ending also doubles up as the neutral (because there are both male and female friends.) It is completely redundant to say, “Mis amigos y amigas Paco y Conchi.”

This is what happens when your let politicians loose on your language. Off with their pods!

(News: Spain)