Spanish airports to adopt ‘gender-free’ announcements
Friday, March 1, 2019 @ 7:45 PM
Spanish airports will change the way they address the public over the tannoy in line with a new ‘anti-sexist language’ policy: they are set to drop the famous opening, “Señores Pasajeros.”
As the Spanish language defaults to the masculine when referring to people or objects collectively – unless all of them are female – the English ‘ladies and gentlemen’ address is only directed at males.
The literal translation for Señores is ‘Misters’, meaning the usual announcement refers to ‘Mr Passengers’, but is understood also to include Señoras, or ‘Mrs’, in plural.
Spanish women do not change their title of address from ‘Miss’ to ‘Mrs’, or Señorita to Señora, upon marriage – this is dictated more by age, although Señorita is thought to be a diminutive and considered rather patronising, so rarely used.
In this way, and given that Spanish women do not change their surnames when they marry, it is impossible to ascertain from their full names including titles whether or not they are wedded.
Some public services, when addressing people collectively, have begun to open with ‘Señores y Señoras’, even though the former, ‘Señores’, on its own, works for both genders, in order to ‘neutralise’ the language in sex terms.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com