Republic of Upper Volta Republic of Upper Volta The Republic of Upper Volta (), now Burkina Faso, was a landlocked West African country established on December 11, 1958, as a self-governing colony within the French Community. Before attaining autonomy it had been French Upper Volta and part of the French Union. On August 5, 1960, it attained full independence from France. Thomas Sankara came to power through a military coup d'état on August 4, 1983. After the coup, he formed the National Council for the Revolution (CNR), with himself as president. Under the direction of Sankara, the country changed its name on August 4,
Gender neutrality in languages with grammatical gender generically, notably in high registers. For example, French "Musée de l'homme" for an anthropology museum exhibiting human culture, not specifically "male culture". This semantic shift was parallel to the evolution of the word "man" in English. These languages therefore largely lack a third, neutral option aside from the gender-specific words for "man" and "woman". In Spanish and in Portuguese "ser humano" is used to say "human being". In Romanian, however, the cognate "om" retains its original meaning of "any human person", as opposed to the gender-specific words for "man" and "woman" ("bărbat" and "femeie", respectively). In Romansh the word "um"