The new one Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Melonihas raised controversy in Italy after announcing that it wants to be called “the prime minister” instead of “the prime minister”, betting on a masculine gender declension instead of a feminine one. In the first communiqués issued since its constitution this Sunday, the new Italian Government has presented the winner of the elections on September 25 as “The Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni”.
“The prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, will be in the Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday, September 25, to make statements about his government program,” says the latest letter issued by Palacio Chigi.
“Cordial and fruitful conversation, of more than an hour between the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron”, reads another of the writings, in this case released after the meeting on Sunday between the leaders of Italy and France . This decision in the declination of Meloni’s position –which in its literal translation into Spanish would be “president of the Council of Ministers”– has not gone unnoticed by the opposition and the media Italians. Specifically, the former president of the Chamber of Deputies Laura Boldrini, of the Social Democratic Democratic Party (PD), is among the most critical wondering if “it’s too much” for the leader of the Brothers of Italy (HDI) to use the feminine.
“The controversial level of Peppa Pig”
“The first female prime minister is called by the masculine, the prime minister. What prevents her from claiming her leadership in the language?affirm the feminine is it too much for HDI, a party that already forgets the sisters in their name?” Boldrini expressed on his Twitter account.
For his part, Carlo Calenda, a member of the centrist Third Pole coalition, has assured that he is becoming “at the controversial level of Peppa Pig“. “Friends, this is going off the rails. Among other controversies of the Government and this one of ‘the prime minister’ we are returning to the controversial level of Peppa Pig, which we believed was an unrepeatable album”, Calenda has also maintained on the social network Twitter.
Nevertheless, it has not been only the politicians who have attacked against this decision of the new Italian ‘premier’.
against the rules
The Trade Union of Journalists of RAI (Usigrai) –Italy’s public television– lamented in a statement that Meloni go against European standards on the use of the feminine in public office and professions. “The lawyer, the lawyer. The prime minister, the prime minister. While Italy laboriously adapts to European standards on the use of the feminine in public office and professions, in many RAI newsrooms we are witnessing a dangerous setback”, Usigrai has affirmed, assuring that there is pressure from management to use the masculine name to address Giorgia Meloni’s new position because “she has asked for it.”
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However, the Italian academic and linguist Vera Gheno, specialized in inclusive language, has declared to the newspaper ‘Fanpage’ that the determined form in the Italian language in the case of Meloni foresees the use of the feminine, although it is not considered an error by the Crusca Academy (the Italian simile of the Royal Spanish Academy, RAE).
However, Gheno has highlighted that despite the Italian prime minister You are free to choose a masculine or feminine declension for your position, “at this point makes a political choice”. “It’s a choice it deviates from the direction our grammar would go. Until not many years ago, choosing the feminine, instead of the masculine, was considered the marked option, while now the matter is being reversed,” the linguist told the aforementioned newspaper.