>In Germany, the debate about gender-neutral and inclusive language is complicated by grammar. Just as in many other languages, gender in German isn’t denoted by personal pronouns alone. German nouns that refer to people have traditionally been masculine or feminine. So, a male citizen is a Bürger and a female citizen is a Bürgerin. But in the plural, the masculine is traditionally used by default — a point that’s been contentious at least as far back as the second wave of feminism in the 1960s.
>In 2018, a new federal law stipulated that all forms of ID — from birth certificates to passports — must include three options: male, female and diverse, all of which can even be left blank.
>Since then, gender-neutral language has become more commonplace. German airline Lufthansa recently ditched the phrase “ladies and gentlemen,” German scholars are preparing a gender-neutral edition of the Bible and in some cities — like Hanover — there’s an official directive about using gender-neutral words.
at this point, we could just speak english or turkish. the concept of gendered denotation of words is so deeply engrained in the language that it will be hardly possible to seperate/reform it in its entirety.
das?
How can this be ‘progression’
“Die Zeit” (time, female) should be having also a partner like “der Zeiter”.
And “Gib mir die Locherin. Sie steht neben dem Computermäuserich.” (Pass me the ~~stapler~~hole puncher next to the computer mouse.) (wrong gendered items and basically makes no sense)
/s
Pick a standard gender, apply it to everything, it becomes neutral.
If you’re going to do it, stop overcomplicating it. It’s not hard, you’re just idiots that want something for people to lord over others.
edit: And apparently people are working to do the exact opposite and gender certain generic terms. Lovely.
>In 2019, Hanover became the first state capital to mandate the use of gender-neutral language in all official communication, from emails to brochures and posters. It deployed what’s known as the “gender star,” an asterisk placed within a noun to indicate it refers to men, women and nonbinary people alike. For instance, the word for all citizens became Bürger*innen.
These are your new overlords. Puttin asterisks, or @s to your written language.
Congratulations.
>Annika Schach, who was the city’s communications director at the time, says the new language guidelines have had a mixed reception
This is code for “my champagne friends clapped and everyone on streets told to to eat shit, in feminine form.”
Butchering our language because some 0.0001 % of the population being offended is something I will never get behind.
Don’t. Just don’t. The language is fine as it is.
That’s fucking hilarious, I can’t wait until this craziness makes its way to Serbian.
So what? For people complaining so much about snowflakism, many posters here are easily offended.
There’s nothing wrong nor surprising about such language adaptations, it’s always happened. New words are added to the dictionary every year. In this case, women have a greater role in politics and society, and the grammar rules in languages using genders seem obsolete. I just don’t see what’s the issue.
There have been similar radical decisions before, like [in chess](https://news.stlpublicradio.org/arts/2016-02-25/on-chess-women-and-the-power-of-the-queen) where the queen switched from being an irrelevant piece to the most powerful one solely because a handful of female monarchs – and that was back in the 15th century. No one questioned it then, and no one questions it now.
Society evolves, its communication systems (and board games) too.
Bulgarian language has gender neutral words, so Germans should just learn Bulgarian.
I wonder who decided that the asterisk was the best solution to solve this. It’s a symbol that can’t be pronounced. It takes you out of the flow when reading and in speech its even worse, people make a slight pause in the middle of the word where the asterisk is supposed to be, like a comma in the middle of a word. I can’t believe that this abomination of the language is becoming a standard. I would much rather just enumerate all gender forms or a pick a generic term where applicable.
13 comments
>In Germany, the debate about gender-neutral and inclusive language is complicated by grammar. Just as in many other languages, gender in German isn’t denoted by personal pronouns alone. German nouns that refer to people have traditionally been masculine or feminine. So, a male citizen is a Bürger and a female citizen is a Bürgerin. But in the plural, the masculine is traditionally used by default — a point that’s been contentious at least as far back as the second wave of feminism in the 1960s.
>In 2018, a new federal law stipulated that all forms of ID — from birth certificates to passports — must include three options: male, female and diverse, all of which can even be left blank.
>Since then, gender-neutral language has become more commonplace. German airline Lufthansa recently ditched the phrase “ladies and gentlemen,” German scholars are preparing a gender-neutral edition of the Bible and in some cities — like Hanover — there’s an official directive about using gender-neutral words.
at this point, we could just speak english or turkish. the concept of gendered denotation of words is so deeply engrained in the language that it will be hardly possible to seperate/reform it in its entirety.
das?
How can this be ‘progression’
“Die Zeit” (time, female) should be having also a partner like “der Zeiter”.
And “Gib mir die Locherin. Sie steht neben dem Computermäuserich.” (Pass me the ~~stapler~~hole puncher next to the computer mouse.) (wrong gendered items and basically makes no sense)
/s
Pick a standard gender, apply it to everything, it becomes neutral.
If you’re going to do it, stop overcomplicating it. It’s not hard, you’re just idiots that want something for people to lord over others.
edit: And apparently people are working to do the exact opposite and gender certain generic terms. Lovely.
>In 2019, Hanover became the first state capital to mandate the use of gender-neutral language in all official communication, from emails to brochures and posters. It deployed what’s known as the “gender star,” an asterisk placed within a noun to indicate it refers to men, women and nonbinary people alike. For instance, the word for all citizens became Bürger*innen.
These are your new overlords. Puttin asterisks, or @s to your written language.
Congratulations.
>Annika Schach, who was the city’s communications director at the time, says the new language guidelines have had a mixed reception
This is code for “my champagne friends clapped and everyone on streets told to to eat shit, in feminine form.”
Butchering our language because some 0.0001 % of the population being offended is something I will never get behind.
Don’t. Just don’t. The language is fine as it is.
That’s fucking hilarious, I can’t wait until this craziness makes its way to Serbian.
So what? For people complaining so much about snowflakism, many posters here are easily offended.
There’s nothing wrong nor surprising about such language adaptations, it’s always happened. New words are added to the dictionary every year. In this case, women have a greater role in politics and society, and the grammar rules in languages using genders seem obsolete. I just don’t see what’s the issue.
There have been similar radical decisions before, like [in chess](https://news.stlpublicradio.org/arts/2016-02-25/on-chess-women-and-the-power-of-the-queen) where the queen switched from being an irrelevant piece to the most powerful one solely because a handful of female monarchs – and that was back in the 15th century. No one questioned it then, and no one questions it now.
Society evolves, its communication systems (and board games) too.
Bulgarian language has gender neutral words, so Germans should just learn Bulgarian.
I wonder who decided that the asterisk was the best solution to solve this. It’s a symbol that can’t be pronounced. It takes you out of the flow when reading and in speech its even worse, people make a slight pause in the middle of the word where the asterisk is supposed to be, like a comma in the middle of a word. I can’t believe that this abomination of the language is becoming a standard. I would much rather just enumerate all gender forms or a pick a generic term where applicable.