In particular, since the late 20th century, the slash is used to permit more gender-neutral language in place of the traditional masculine or plural gender neutrals. In the case of English, this is usually restricted to degendered pronouns such as "he/she" or "s/he". Most other Indo-European languages include more far-reaching use of grammatical gender. In these, the separate gendered desinences (grammatical suffices) of the words may be given divided by slashes or set off with parentheses. For example, in Spanish, is a son and a is a daughter; some proponents of gender-neutral language advocate the use of or when writing for a general audience or addressing a listener of unknown gender. Less commonly, the æ ligature or at sign is used instead: . Similarly, in German, refers to any secretary and to an explicitly female secretary; some advocates of gender neutrality support forms such as for general use. This does not always work smoothly, however: problems arise in the case of words like ("doctor") where the explicitly female form is umlauted and words like ("Chinese person") where the explicitly female form loses the terminal "-e".