You've noticed some changes in our writing lately (*, -o/a, -i/e …)?
In this article Cecilia Schoolboy which, in addition to being a pillar of the our Team, has made the values of inclusiveness and accessibility his profession, explains the choices we have made with the use of schwa towards an inclusive language.
“Lo Stivaletto has been connecting families since 2016.
In 2023 we started to think better about our community and who, unintentionally, we were excluding from our offerings and communications.
We decided to undertake a series of changes that better reflected our vision of the family.
Families are a unique collection of people linked by love, affection and shared experiences. There is no single form of family, but a vast range of structures that reflect human diversity. There are families made up of a mother and a father, families without children, families with same-sex parents, single-parent families, extended families with grandparents and aunts and uncles who play an important role, adoptive families, and many other variations. Each family is unique in its makeup and history, and all deserve to be recognized and celebrated.
At the Stivaletto we want to celebrate all families and all gender identities.
This is why we have decided to adopt inclusive language in all our communication and adopt it in our texts two new characters, the schwa, “ǝ”, in the singular, and the long schwa, “ɜ”, in the plural.
The schwa is pronounced completely neutral, keeping the tongue in the center of the mouth and the muscles relaxed.
The schwa allows us to include everyone, including people who don't identify with traditional gender pronouns.
With these small, big changes we hope to fulfill the role we aspire for Lo Stivaletto: a network to connect all families who love Italian culture, regardless of the structure and identities that compose them.
It is a path of growth and evolution, not without errors and missteps. If you have feedback, suggestions for improvement, we will be happy to listen to them and use them to continue improving.”
One of sources that we use most for our linguistic choices is the site Inclusive Italian.
Furthermore, if this topic interests you, we are organizing with Cecilia an in-depth workshop for next autumn. Continue following us!