Is this for real? I can’t draw no other conclusion than US defaultism in trans activism gives a free pass to TERF politics in Europe. This kind of news from Germany cannot mean anything good.
According to Wikipedia:
In 2019, the German Language Association VDS (Verein Deutsche Sprache; not to be confused with the Association for the German Language Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache, GfdS) launched a petition against the use of the gender star, saying it was a “destructive intrusion” into the German language and created “ridiculous linguistic structures”. It was signed by over 100 writers and scholars.[11] Luise F. Pusch, a German feminist linguist, criticises the gender star as it still makes women the ‘second choice’ by the use of the feminine suffix.[12] In 2020, the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache declared Gendersternchen to be one of the 10 German Words of the Year.[13]
In 2023, the state of Saxony banned the use of gender stars and gender gaps in schools and education, which marks students’ use of the gender stars as incorrect.[14][15] In March 2024, Bavaria banned gender-neutral language in schools, universities and several other public authorities.[16][17] In April 2024, Hesse banned the use of gender neutral language, including gender stars, in administrative language.[18]
Here are the original Wikipedia references
- “Der Aufruf und seine Erstunterzeichner”. Verein Deutsche Sprache (in German). 6 March 2019. Retrieved 5 April 2020.
- Schlüter, Nadja (22 April 2019). ““Das Gendersternchen ist nicht die richtige Lösung””. Jetzt.de (in German). Retrieved 5 April 2020. “GfdS Wort des Jahres” (in German). Retrieved 13 December 2020.
- Jones, Sam; Willsher, Kim; Oltermann, Philip; Giuffrida, Angela (2023-11-04). “What’s in a word? How less-gendered language is faring across Europe”. The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-04-05.
- “Schools in Saxony are forbidden to use gender language”. cne.news. Retrieved 2024-04-05.
I got into this rabbit hole from this news article
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Let’s be honest: it looks like shit and interrupts the flow of a sentence. The alternative of writing both words completely also makes sentences way longer than they should be.
Every gendered language would have to make massive changes to become ungendered and change their grammar too. There’s quite a large list of ungendered languages.
German, to my knowledge, is like Russian and has cases which change the ending of a noun depending on the purpose in the sentence (subject, direct object, indirect object, possessor, location, time, …). Languages with only male and female would have to add a neutral ending, and languages with 3 grammatical genders would have to either use the neutral ending - if there is one, or make a new one specific to living beings.
Then of course pronouns would have to be changed too. In English they/them is already confusing enough when talking about a singular person to somebody and the person doesn’t know it’s a single person e.g “I talked to them today” - a group or a person? Until hints are dropped it isn’t clear. The most logical would’ve been “it”, but that’s used for inanimate objects. I’m sure there’s a neutral third person singular pronoun languages could borrow instead of using the second person plural.
FYI: Unlike Russian and other Slavic languages German doesn’t (usually) decline the noun, just the article (der/den/dem/des, etc).
Thanks, you’re correct. I was mixing that up with Latin and Greek. Dunno if Spanish and other romance languages have it too.
Not Spanish or French, other romance I don’t think so, maybe Romanian?
But aren’t all these technicalities to undermine the inclusion of one or more genders on the basis of some linguistic purism?
This makes me smirk, because a single course in college linguistics will persuade you there is not bigger amalgamated bastard in town than a human language, which is any non-formal language.
For example, you say they ambiguity of they/them, isn’t this comparable to the ambiguity between you/you in plural/singular.
Ambiguity is like, an inherent feature of any language and there are hundreds of languages that resolve ambiguities based on context. Plus, the scholars said that singular them is in usage since the Middle Ages or sth.
So to me all this is a tension between A and B, where A is either linguistic purism or typographical convenience, and B is always including women/trans/non-binary folks. At the same time most people won’t accept the feminine gender as all-inclusive because of their fears of emasculation.
It is a deeply laughable situation.
The German thing is a bit different. It’s kind of like if English didn’t have “they” as a neutral alternative, so people use “**e” as way to mean neither “he” nor “she”.
That’s fine in writing, but it looks pretty weird, doesn’t work well in other forms, and you get things like “e gives the ball to h”. It also really doesn’t work outside the written word, because how do you pronounce that?
And I do understand that you don’t want the female form to be the neutral form. If youre genderneutral, it probably feels weird to be constantly adressed as a woman.
Would be interesting to know what’s your native language, to get an idea of what evolutions are possible.
Because surely someone with such a stark opinion on the matters speaks a gendered language natively, right?
Yeah Saxony and Bavaria are pretty much in the hand of populistic politicians and or outright right extremists.
Yeah, pretty much that. Just because those Staates have banned it in administrative formal writing, this is in no Case a generalization for Germany. Just “Freistaat” doing their Thing as opposed to the other.
Also as a Note, that “Verein” has in no Case any inflouence over the course of education, as that is governed* by the “Gesellschaft” as mentioned.
*As in giving recommendations
Ah Bavaria has right wing extremists? I miss the times when one could flee to the US under similar circumstances.
Bavaria is like Texas. You have Munich and a few other cities that are progressive and vote even green (so, Austin) , and the rest is cowboys and farmers.
Mostly Populists like Söder of CSU.
@whydudothatdrcrane No, gender neutral pronouns are not banned. What is banned is the Binnen-I (Mitarbeiter*innen). It is recommended to use much easier to read Mitarbeiter und Mitarbeiterinnen or Mitarbeitende. Also the belittled version Mitarbeiterchen is gender neutral and allowed.
I understand this is a fine point. What is the status report on gender legislation in Germany then? Is this isolated from broader anti-trans politics as a matter of language puritanism and aesthetics?
@whydudothatdrcrane There are only two relevant parties who are against gender neutrality: The Nazis from AfD and CxU. I also don*t like the Binnen-I and use an browser extension to fix that for me.
Krankenschwester is already female the offical Job name is Krankenpflegefachkraft (which is already neutral).
The gender star is anything but gender neutral. It highlight the different genders artificially and still makes the female variant of the word the second choice by separating it like this /* This differentiates it from the default general masculine word which is supposed to include everybody and further strengthens the image of the man as the default in a certain job. I’m sorry but I strongly disagree with you on this one.
And for non-Native german speakers, if this sounds confusing that is because it is!
I see. Probably most North-Americans would confuse “gender-neutral” with “non-binary inclusive”.
That’s a north American problem though. German settled on nouns that are more like “the ones who X”. Like, Studierende instead of Studenten and Studentinnen. (The last two are just “students” in their gender specific form. The first one literally translated means “the ones who study”)
These laws are only applicable in two of Germany’s 16 states and only for state officials and authorities as well as schools. The other states mostly critize those states for infringing on equality rights. It just bans the use of gender related punctuations in written documents and school exams. It’s not well thought out.
You can still use gender neutral terms (Lehrende instead of Lehrer*innen). It’s a big deal as those states do it to cater to right-wing voters and fish them from the nazi-party AFD.
Btw Binnen-I is LehrerInnen. Other gender neutral notations are a “*”, “_” or “:”
I think it just makes the german language ugly and still keeps the female version of a word as a second choice. Grammatically speaking I believe just common masculine version of a word which is supposed to speak for everyone involved just makes more sense. If we want gender equality we shouldn’t highlight the different genders more and make the female version the second choice, but thats just my opinion
Arguing that the female version makes it a second choice and then erasing it completely makes absolutely no sense. If german was a language with no difference in gender this might work, but that’s not what it is. We have female forms for most nouns so this will not work. A gender asterisk includes all genders. The argument that it puts female form second is also week as in german the emphasis of a word is usually on the last syllable.
Like it or not, our way of talking and writing is excluding people and is biasing our perception as to which things (especially jobs) are mainly male and what are female. There are enough studies about language and gender bias out there.
Words have power and we should take it seriously.
If I write job/*in that puts an emphasis on how the jobs default is a male person, with that weird female inclusivity attached. If we just accepted that the gender neutral way is the common masculine form which applies regardless of the gender I think its more beneficial.
As a person regularly writing regular expressions, the usage of
*in a written language rubs me the wrong way. I wouldn’t mind Mitarbeiter/innen, similar to how Czech does it (prodavač/ka, although some are impossible to shorten like skladník/skladnice, as skladník/ce sounds too weird, much like Krankenschwester*innen would).Krankenschwesterinnen
Der Begriff ist eh obsolte, ist nun Krankenpfleger.
I think you mean Krankenpfleger*in
I think you mean Krankenpfleger
I have the “Binnen-I be gone” extension install :(
regularly writing regular expressions
The statement speaks for itself.
I don’t know but I wouldn’t be surprised if those words are the reason for the
*being included on the keyboard in the first place 😅Multiplication. It’s why it’s on the numpad.
Wouldn’t it make more sense just to use
×instead if that was the case? I guess maybe it makes it easier to differentiate it fromx?I guess it’s probably just a hold over from typewriters that ended up setting the standard for computers e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_2741
Wouldn’t it make more sense just to use
×instead if that was the case? I guess maybe it makes it easier to differentiate it fromx?This right here is the exact reason, especially because
xis frequently used as a variable which may be sitting directly nex to×.
There is no good way to use gender neutral language in German. The language works differently than English.
So people came up with workarounds like putting stars in nouns to include both forms of the word for male and female but German grammar does not work well with this. There is also no good equivalent to using “they” as a neutral pronoun.
People still are trying to figure out how to make German more inclusive but this isn’t easy.
Don’t be ignorant.
I 100% agree that it’s not perfect. Still, banning an attempt at being inclusive is clearly not about how impractical it can be. And even if it were, policing language is stupid 9 times out of 10.
This is a cultural thing. My wife has studdied German culture, particularly relating to their relationship with their language, pretty extensively and from what she says they are exceedingly resistant to changes to their general language at all. Hence all of the compound nouns for new devices instead of coming up with a new word. Apparently the cultural adoption of “Das handy” for cellphone was a cultural milestone since they actually used something new instead of trying to cram together “Mobile Wireless Vocal Communication Device” into one word.
If you police it it’s not a cultural thing. If it was just a cultural thing than we could just let the * slowly die out. But banning language hinders progress. And I’m sorry, but the German language is constantly shifting and changing. There have even been multiple planned changes that went pretty well in recent history. Using English words might have been a big change back then, but now it’s really common. The first terms for mobile were things like “Taschentelefon” (pocket telephone), “drahtloses Telephone” (wireles telephone) or the one that is still in use “Mobiltelefon” (mobile phone). None of these seem outlandish to me.
Same in Italian.
Italian is heavily gendered, even inanimate objects have genders. A chair? It’s a female. A door? It’s a male.
It’s not easy to modify a language; some people on the internet are trying using stars and other non-letters, but the result is ridiculous and nobody actually speaks like that in real life.
In Dutch a door is female. Chair? Male.
Luckily it is almost completely irrelevant in Dutch whether a word is male of female. Heck, I am Dutch an I wouldn’t be able to tell male and female words apart most of the time.
I speak Flemish and when I speak dialect it’s pretty easy. When I say ‘ne stoel’ it’s masculin. ‘Ne deur’ doesn’t work so is femine.
Interesting, in the Netherlands we mostly avoid having to gender anything but humans.
‘‘De deur staat open. Doe je haar even dicht?’’
I mean, you can’t go without gendering if the language is like that.
Saxony and Hesse are currently deep in the far right clutches of the Alternative für Deutaschland, so this does not really come as a surprise.
And why would you care? You are obviously not German (otherwise you would know that the shit you post is BS) and obviously scared about inclusivity (because you worry about how other people call themselves).
Get a life.
Since this vile comment goes against Lemmy etiquette I need not provide a response. But I will.
how other people call themselves
You must be another level of stupid to write this out. Perhaps you mean, I shouldn’t care what other “governments” or “majorities” want their citizens to call or not-call themselves. Only a nationalist would say such a thing, that your government has the right to self-define (or …impose?) how its people call themselves. This is some true Orban-level shit you managed to fit in your, well, fit.
And, yes, this is a politics issue I want to see in the same maps we monitor US gender politics with.
obviously not German
Very proudly not so. I cherish the fact that German nationalists tend to end up shot or hang, as one of the few things that provide meaning to my post-WWII life. The historical equivalent of a narcissist man-child demanding attention to himself, a real small-dick energy nation, that enthusiastically voted for a mustached idiot for the job. So, not German, and so happy about it.
obviously scared about inclusivity
The fact that you fail to understand this is a pro-inclusivity post means that you are so dump that you would have been euthanized in your own country, less than 100 years ago, unless you enrolled to a specific party of anti-intellectual idiots. Ah I forgot, you already are. Sound survival of the fittest strategy.
Now, let’s sit around waiting you to ridicule yourself with another one of these comments ROFL
The “star construct” you mention and hang an entire theory on is just a German language construct. It has to do with gender but not the way you imagine it to be. Just gender as a language construct (German is full of gender constructs).
Maybe I made the error of explaining your post with the typical US “there is only one gender” stance which is so irritatingly omni present on youtube nowadays.
But if that was not your intention, it might also be an error to call me nationalist. I am not. I am all for gender inclusivity. If you are as well we have no beef.
And PS: yes, you are still an asshole.
you are still an asshole
Thank you
the error of explaining your post with the typical US
Sure enough going after your colloquotors’ nationality was an ill-chosen angle, since you wanted to criticize the idea of one-gender, reducing it to Americans. Same goes for another asshole who was quick to attribute it to me supposedly being the speaker of a “genderless” language.
This is a bullshit attitude because you are going for the extra step.
“You don’t get the nuances of our language to understand what this is about. It is because you are not German / you are the native of a genderless language / you are a US defaultist who wants to impose his own view”
For one thing I hardly think English is a genderless language, and second has it crossed your mind someone can speak several languages fluently, some of which “gendered”.
I am not responsible for the lamentable state of internet discussions these days, but next time try to formulate and debunk the opponent idea before spewing several extra thought steps, bringing ad hominem and national origins into the mix, if you don’t want to be spoken to like that.
an error to call me nationalist. I am not
Great, Good for you
Jeez you really are full of it.
Nevermind. Have fun playing by yourself.
I have no opinion mostly bc I didn’t read the whole thing) but I think its funny how “over 100 writers and scholars” isnt the impact it used to be. U can get 100 ppl to sign just about anything, especially in today’s day and age when it’s so easy for ppl to find other ppl with the same exact prejudices
Good point
I don’t know what a gender star is, but it sounds cool
Let’s take the word “Kassierer”, which is German for cashier. Kassierer is the male form, Kassiererin is the female form.
The idea of the Gendersternchen is that you write Kassierer*in to indicate that it means either male or female. I believe “Sternchen” (“little star”) translates to asterisk.
It denotes all genders not only male and female by using the asterisk as a wildcard for everything that could be in between the ends of the spectrum from male (Kassierer) to female (Kassiererin).
I know nothing about german but some languages don’t even have neutral pronouns, even things have gender. In this case you either invent a new word or let it be.
I am pretty sure gender norms, even strict ones, occur to grammatically genderless languages, like Hungarian IIRC. So if a Hungarian student used a ‘*’ to be non-binary inclusive, this could not have meaning in this society, because their language is genderless? I doubt it.
You ok?
Sorry i don’t get it. As I said you can use but you would have to invent a new word or just try to use some other word with non related meaning. For exemple dome languages without neutral words will use the male pronoun as the norm when talking about man and women together. I’m trying to say just accept this as women have done for centuries
The very same happens in French. The use of recently popular gender-neutral structures like “étudiant.e.s” is strongly discouraged in formal writing. The older “étudiant(e)s” less so but still not recommended.
What’s recommended is to either say “étudiants et étudiantes” or just use the masculine form as a group for both masculine and feminine forms, as has been the standard forever, and almost no one bats an eye at.
It’s not TERF, it’s not misogynistic, it’s just to make texts easier to read. It takes more time and effort to read a text full of those extra period/parenthesis characters, for very very little gain.
People wanting to write a text where they consider the sacrifice in readability worth it for the extra emphasis on gender exclusion still can; the police won’t show up. It’s just not standard grammar.
This always makes me wonder why isn’t the feminine that is all inclusive. It occurred to me it is because males would take offense to be called women, where (at least traditionally) this is not the case the other way round.
In german or french It is mostly because the female version is just the male one with an extra ending. I.e. händler / händlerin English would have something similar but the male as default is just the now. You dont say actress but actor
I think that would be a history/etymology lesson going all the way back to Latin. I haven’t studied Latin, but I think there used to be a lot more grammatical genders, but they were gradually merged into one another in languages with a Latin heritage.
Why the neutral gender got merged into masculine and not feminine is a good question. Maybe it was just because they were the most similar.
Yes, neutral and masculine were similar, and they just collapsed into one.
I speak Italian, which works similarly to French. The male form is called the “non-marked” form, while the female is “marked”. It means that if you use the female form, you’re actually talking about women, otherwise it may be anyone. So, the real inclusive form would be to just use the male form.
It’s because both Italian and French come from Latin. Latin used to have three forms: male, female and neutral. The neutral and male form were very similar, so during the evolution from Latin to modern languages, the two forms collapsed into one.
Because of how languages evolved. But my male neighbour still is a midwife.
In French the masculine and neutral gender collapsed. That’s why masculine is a default. All neutral pronouns merged with the masculine due to sound shifts.
Agreed. I think using the masculine as the default should be fine if everyone agrees that it applies to all genders in this context. I wouldn’t even mind if the feminine was used for this instead. It’s just for the sake of legibility.
Same in Dutch but ‘‘student(e)’’ is generally accepted.
