vocêseleselas

Vocêseleselas is a term circulated in debates about gender-inclusive language within Portuguese-speaking communities. It is described as a proposed second-person form intended to address or refer to a person or group without signaling gender. The construction blends elements associated with different pronouns, including você (you), eles and elas (they, masculine and feminine), and the shorter inclusive form les that appears in some activist spellings. The term is not standardized and is largely confined to online discussions or localized debates rather than formal grammar.

Origin and forms: The word is typically written as vocêseleselas, with variants such as você-se-les-as or vocêseles. These forms reflect ongoing experiments to create gender-inclusive addressables in Portuguese. Because there is no single regulatory authority governing pronouns in Portuguese, usage varies by community and region. Variants reflect different approaches to combining gendered and non-gendered elements.

Usage and social context: In communities advocating inclusive language, vocêseleselas is proposed as a pronoun or vocative to include people who identify outside the binary gender system. It is most commonly encountered in online text, social media, and academic discussions rather than in formal writing. Critics argue that such forms complicate communication and grammar and that they have limited acceptance outside activist circles.

Grammar and adaptation: If adopted, it would function analogously to a second-person pronoun, but its gender inclusivity would require new or repurposed agreement patterns for verbs and adjectives. There is no established normative rule for its capitalization, punctuation, or case forms, which contributes to inconsistent usage.

Reception and status: No major language authority recognizes vocêseleselas as standard Portuguese. It remains a niche term within discussions of inclusive language and gender diversity. Proponents see it as a linguistic experiment and social statement; critics view it as impractical or confusing. It sits alongside other inclusive forms in ongoing debates about how to address people respectfully in Portuguese.