Twitter Adds ‘Arabic (feminine)’ Language Option In A Bid To Further Diversify

Twitter has introduced an “Arabic (feminine)” language setting enabling the social media site to speak to users using feminine grammar, part of what it said was towards its inclusion and diversity drive.

“We want our service to reflect the voices that shape the conversations that take place on our service,” said Rasha Fawakhiri.

In Arabic, just like French, verbs agree with the gender of their subject and usually masculine forms are used to address mixed or unknown audiences and are the default in most texts.

Until now, the instruction for the user to Tweet in Arabic had appeared only in the masculine form “gharrid”. With a change of settings, this command can now appear on Twitter as “gharridi”, the feminine form.

While Dubai-based global logistics company Aramex in April added a similar language option to its corporate website. Twitter says it is the first social media site to introduce an “Arabic (feminine)” language option.

Last year the company amended some of the language used by its engineers in their processes to be more inclusive replacing “man hours” with “person or engineer hours”, and “master/slave” with “leader/follower”