A good number of languages worldwide have both a masculine and feminine form for their vocabulary. When it comes to the #technolgy side adding support for them, they have usually been using the masculine form. That changes with Arabic users on Twitter, as the platform officially announced the addition of the feminine form of Arabic in a blog post.
How to best explain it? This is straight from their blog post: “People who select this setting will be addressed in the feminine form. For example, “Tweet” will be غرّدي (which addresses women) rather than the default Arabic today, which is غرّد (addressing men). Also, “Explore” will be إستكشفي rather than إستكشف. “
Ladies, start using it
For the many female users who wish to start using it, you just need to follow these:
- Log in to Twitter website via desktop/laptop
- Go to “Settings and privacy,” then “Accessibility, display, and languages.”
- Next, select “Languages” and go to “Display language”.
- Then you’ll see the option in the drop-down selection.
Note that the change will be expanded to both the mobile apps soon, so this is a good start in helping to bring more activity to the platform and maybe even new users.
But there’s one more thing that you may not know about this new addition. This began as work from a person based here in the MENA region while working for VMLY&R Commerce (formerly known as Geometry MENA), so kudos to him and the agency that helped to make this happen after many years.
To help raise awareness for this new addition, Twitter is raising awareness of the update with a new campaign that includes a hashtag-triggered emoji unlocked by #FeminineArabic and أتحدث_بالمؤنث#.
Image Credits: Twitter blog
