It's interesting to watch languages evolve around this issue. I can't help but contrast this and other debates by native speakers with the obnoxious spread of "LatinX", a term which makes no sense if you speak Spanish (I prefer Latine as a gender-neutral term).
I wonder whether inserting underscores or asterisks, frequently used in search as a wildcard character, into words will cause archive indexing/retrieval problems down the line. I'm asking seriously, not flippantly, here.
I'd guess not, as anything that would store these new words is probably storing longer text strings, and thus already would need to be dealing with escapes properly. Unlike names, these words won't be keys terribly often.
T. Sowell: The Quest for Cosmic Justice can be summarized in three propositions which may seem to be axiomatic, but whose implications are in fact politically controversial:
1. The impossible is not going to be achieved.
2. It is a waste of precious resources to try to achieve it.
3. The devastating costs and social dangers which go with these attempts to achieve the impossible should be taken into account.
It's certainly possible to find a way to refer to people without gender; plenty of other languages do it! Conceptually, it's a very simple idea, and one programmers certainly can grasp due to our familiarity with typed references/pointers, even if ones natural language doesn't have it (yet).
It's impossible to prove that something is culturally impossible, though. So my point stands: premise #1 in the comment above, when interpreted as "culturally impossible", is a statement without support. When interpreted as "technically impossible", it's a false premise.
It’s also possible to make do with 3, or hell, no tenses, as some languages do. You could dispel a phonetic alphabet and use ideograms, that’s a thing too.
Doesn’t mean it’s a good idea for English, or other languages either.
Thanks for the links, as a German I did not even know that it existed. However, I am really surprised how well the gender gap can be pronounced by people with a glottal stop. IMHO the print form is the rather ugly bit. Maybe adding a glottal stop (ʔ) to the german alphabet would be the easier solution.
A much better idea than that horrible asterisk and its pronunciation. However, I think it still misses the mark. There‘s an opportunity to make German simpler AND more gender-neutral by completely dropping both the masculine and feminine forms. Other languages have done so (or got really close) before. English and Dutch (not the Flemish variant) being the closest ones to German. Instead of saying „die Bürger*innen“, you could just say „die Bürger“, which would simply be the plural form of „das Bürger“. It also avoids the whole „Bürger* innenmeister* innen“ issue…
Currently we say “der Bürger“ for a citizen of unknown or male sex. „der“ is male, so certain people perceive sexism.
The plural for citizens of unknown, male or female sex is „die Bürger“. „die“ is female. Yet in this case no one perceives it as sexism.
The proposal you refer to just removes the former while leaving the latter. By this logic of „the (der) spoon“ being sexist, it’s now just become sexist towards men?
Add to this the fact that German has words to refer specifically to „female citizens“, „female doctors“ etc, but not for men, they’re generic. Yet no one complains.
I can’t imagine something less important. We can’t afford to go to space because people are starving but we can certainly afford to reformulate our entire language?
"That's exactly where the economy's going, isn't it? Nobody makes things anymore. We just provide pointless services. I'm a party planner. I'm a pencil case organizer. I shout on panel shows. We Used To Make Steel."
Gender reform is the exact equivalent of bike shedding.
And my opinion is that bike shedding takes high priority because it's very convenient to tackle problems that take no effort to solve, independently of their importance.
yay... let's quote a book without understanding it. There should be a school of thought for this, I will sponsor it. Let's call it the Pseudo intellectual Institute of Shitty Quotes.
I have read the book. In the case of 1984, they remove words. In this case they add words in order to fit an ideology.
Go back to reddit Mr. Not Pseudo Intellectual
In 1984 the usage of works gets restricted by a totalitarian government, now in the real world written and spoken language evolves trough discourse even with people like yourself. I know you read the book... I said you didn't understand it.
Sorry, didn't know you were a 1984 connoisseur.
You didn't even refute my argument "In this case they add words in order to fit an ideology".
All you added was that you knew the book and understood it more than me.
You can gender whom ever you want as whatever you want without repercussions from your government. You can add words you can retract words in German and the government will not care, will not incarcerate you or will do you physical or financial harm. There is no argument except that you mistook math class with language study. There also is only one exception the
denying of the Holocaust I hope we are at least on the same page about this one.
As a native English speaker who took German as a kid, I was always perplexed by gendered nouns. Why are fruit feminine and pencils and pens masculine? Is it because writing instruments were the tools of men or because they're phallic? Why is lawyer feminine? Is it a form or derision? Best I recall (and can find), it's arbitrary and I would assume, like many things in our world, they were chosen based on some gender association that often boils down to misogyny. German has neutral articles as well.
While I wouldn't spend my life chasing this debate, as an outside observer, I can't understand why normalizing on "das" would be a problem for 99% of the things and moving forward from there. Language evolves and if we can evolve it to be more inclusive, why not?
Imagine someone comes along and insists that your native language is discriminative on something totally innocuous. Like, say, “a” vs “the”. Dunno, because you can make some nouns special this way. It lets you say “the man” and “a woman” which shows, allegedly, disrespect to one of the genders. You must integrate them into one “tha”. Never mind you lose a key mechanism for expression: surely, you’re not sexist, are you?
You may find it a bit silly or ridiculous, but perhaps, like other people, you may find the very suggestion offensive: that unless you put an axe to the language you speak, according to someone’s half-baked ideas, you’re a bigoted misogynist.
Languages evolve, we change bits to better fit the zeitgeist and that’s normal. But these “though shalt change your language because I say so and I know better” wars are ridiculous.
Why can't gendered nouns stay as a cultural curiosity?
To me the Moon will always be feminine and the Sun masculine, even if they're not gendered in English. So what? People that are bothered by this duality tacitly imply that one of these gender is inherently worse than the other, and speaks volumes about their assumptions and views of the world.
So what if fruit is female and pencils are male? How is that misogyny? Are fruits "weak"? Do they have "emotions"? No, saying it's rooted in misogyny is cultural and historical revisionism pushing an agenda.
Gender activism tries to make society more moderate and inclusive by taking an extremist position: culture will eventually settle towards a more moderate, but still progressive view of the matter.
I expect society to be more inclusive after these efforts, but I honestly do not want nor hope these extremist views to actually take hold. They're just a means to an end. I accept them in the hope they make a better world, but viewed by themselves they're just posturing bullshit.
> Why are fruit feminine and pencils and pens masculine? Is it because writing instruments were the tools of men or because they're phallic? […] it's arbitrary and I would assume, like many things in our world, they were chosen based on some gender association that often boils down to misogyny
As a non-native German speaker, I sometimes struggle with understanding speech (especially with thick accents). Knowing the gender lets me narrow down the possibilities of what a word might be, when I don't hear it all the way.
The grammatical genus doesn't have anything to do with sexuality. It is arbitrary otherwise and difficult to learn, true. Lawyer is masculine in German, plurals are always feminine.
> they were chosen based on some gender association that often boils down to misogyny
No. They were explicitly not chosen for this reason. There are some exceptions maybe, but the whole debate is based on false assumptions.
There are languages which don't do this of course. I don't see any problems that affect one country but not the other.
No.
In the sense that henceforth we will no longer be allowed to use Oldspeak gendered pronouns - it is clearly mandating (in this particular context) that we adopt a more restricted form of expression.
In my personal experience it certainly does. People get annoyed by this pretty quick. Also it's being perceived as something devised by some sort of intellectual elite that are gonna teach the unwashed masses how to write and speak properly.
As a German I would much rather say: a small part of intellectual people (mostly sitting in the offices of left-leaning newspapers) debate while the rest is pretty annoyed by it or does not even care.
As a German this is assumptionist at best and plain ignorance at the worst. I don't even get how something so biased and subjective gets voted so high. He doesn't base it on empirical numbers like the article, no, he has feelings.
The poll you refer to without linking it is from July 2021 and the ONE question asked is if people find it "important" or "not important" and most answered with they don't care. Does don't care imply to you that people are against it? Because you can ask the question in a poll and then come and refer to it as gospel otherwise I don't care.
How do you know which poll I am referring to? Actually I said "polls" and there have been several polls at least this year. For instance one in May where the majority of people (65%) where against gender-neutral words. Interestingly a poll made by the the same institute (Infratest Dimap) the year before had only 56% against gender-neutral words. So I conclude the opposition is growing.
I guess we have an answer to fact based arguments and your cognitive abilities. As soon as someone wants proof the only thing people like you do is lash out. It's incredible.
My analysis that you are a smartass is totally fact-based. The first thing you wrote was "the poll you refer to without linking" which is quite presumptuous to begin with.
Also what proof, what data? The polls are out there so why not check on them? There have been several of them and all of them had a majority against gender-neutral wording. If you wanna doubt this that's borderline conspiracy theory and I suggest you provide some data to refute those polls.
The only representative one is the one from July 2021 if you have access to anything that helps your argument feel free to enlighten us otherwise just stop pondering.
From the original article: Speaking from the city of Mainz, Kleber says: "You get reluctant and rare praise for it, but you get a lot and vehement opposition to it.
Surely that's all fantasy and you are right that there's a huge majority that supports gender-neutral wording.
My god what a representative study you pulled out of your hat. A single quote of one journalist about the personal experiences he had in one city. That can't be your extensive studies or is it?
Na it's just way to funny asking them for sources. Are you triggered because he can't bring up any of the studies he has right next to him or do you really want everyone to just believe shit he made up? Do you think facts are sensibilities? Because if you do you are probably the one who needs a safe space when the disk suddenly blows up to sphere.
Sources are overvalued. That aside, are you able to have and articulate your own thoughts? What is it with all this 'he said, she said, there it is written'? Signed?
That's the fanning of fries for brains. Enjoy your bubble.
I don't care. IMO you are a tribal fashion victim, engaging in cargo cultist rituals, and feeling empowered by them.
While that may be funny to watch for some time, stuff like that belongs into theme parks, or similar reservations.
What are you talking about? What studies? There have been several polls about the topic in question (Infratest Dimap, mdr, ZDF, Forsa ..). You can easily google them. In every single one there was a majority against gender-neutral wording in one way or another. The quote by Claus Kleber confirms this tendency. If you seriously doubt this you are the one who should show some data.
You don't even understand that it's not the "personal experience of one single journalist he had in one city". "Speaking from the city of Mainz" means he is talking from the ZDF headquarters, that's all. Obviously it's the feedback the TV station got from all over Germany.
Apple’s Siri already pronounces it and the software is already localized like that. For example, gender neutral artist is „Künstler:in“ spoken as „quinstler’in“
It may be that the generic masculine bears witness of an historical injustice, but so what? A trace of an injustice is not a continuation of it. A language should be capable of expressing things simply and elegantly; it oughtn't to be burdened with the need constantly to manifest some orthodoxy.
There already at least three to four variants of "gender-neutral" phrases used in German. The almost classic one with using a "binnen-I" (within-I) as in "BürgerIn" (citizen masculine and feminine). Doesn't work so great in the plural, though, were with "BürgerInnen" you lose the masculine marker. The same with the more recent "Bürger:in" or ""Bürger*in".
There's also the possibility of enumerating "Bürger" und "Bürgerin", which becomes quite tedious when it's used throughout longer texts.
In special cases it's possible to use the noun form of an adjective as in "Studierende" which has become the standard gender-neutral form of "students". As a German native speaker I never understood how "Studenten" has been perceived to exclude female students but that's how it is now. In the same vein people taking part in something are now called "Teilnehmende" while they were formerly called "Teilnehmer".
Personally I find all of this horrible although of course I am for equality, equal opportunity and equal pay.
Pick one, I don't care which, make it all feminine I don't care. They're worsft, tools to convey a message and not the message itself, so anything reasonable works.
Just stick to something known and which evolved after centuries of organic shaping, don't come up with tumblr-tier neographs like ə, 3, x, *.
It’s a kind of forward error correction for us. Even if you speak fast under noisy conditions I can tell what you said because certain options collide with the surrounding grammar. Removing this would lead to misunderstandings and more „what did you say?“. For people that already speak the language it is therefore purely a loss.
Yeah, the articles the comes from masculine, that from feminine, and this from the neuter demonstrative. That's what I was talking about. It seems I was mistaken, no wonder Interlingua makers used Romance masculine demonstrative le for their universal article due to using English as grammatical source.
Ille, illos, illa
Le, les, los, las, etc
Romance languages inventing gendered articles from gendered demonstratives is always fun.
74 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 143 ms ] thread76% of Latino adults say they haven't even heard of it, 20% have heard of it but do not use it, and 3% use it.
The most usage is by women 18-29, with 7% using it.
The majority say that if you need a non-gendered term of such people use "Hispanic".
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in...
1. The impossible is not going to be achieved.
2. It is a waste of precious resources to try to achieve it.
3. The devastating costs and social dangers which go with these attempts to achieve the impossible should be taken into account.
Doesn’t mean it’s a good idea for English, or other languages either.
What is the cost/benefit in that?
There is a growing list of pronoms and identification, do we need to change the language for every identification that someone can create?
https://delesystem.wordpress.com/ -> https://geschlechtsneutral.net/
Yes, it's quite a big change, but probably that's unavoidable with the constraints of what they want to achieve.
Currently we say “der Bürger“ for a citizen of unknown or male sex. „der“ is male, so certain people perceive sexism.
The plural for citizens of unknown, male or female sex is „die Bürger“. „die“ is female. Yet in this case no one perceives it as sexism.
The proposal you refer to just removes the former while leaving the latter. By this logic of „the (der) spoon“ being sexist, it’s now just become sexist towards men?
Add to this the fact that German has words to refer specifically to „female citizens“, „female doctors“ etc, but not for men, they’re generic. Yet no one complains.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwfejPdonnU
And my opinion is that bike shedding takes high priority because it's very convenient to tackle problems that take no effort to solve, independently of their importance.
In case of 1984, words were removed, in this case words are being added, but I bet that they plan to remove gendered words if this gets through.
While I wouldn't spend my life chasing this debate, as an outside observer, I can't understand why normalizing on "das" would be a problem for 99% of the things and moving forward from there. Language evolves and if we can evolve it to be more inclusive, why not?
You may find it a bit silly or ridiculous, but perhaps, like other people, you may find the very suggestion offensive: that unless you put an axe to the language you speak, according to someone’s half-baked ideas, you’re a bigoted misogynist.
Languages evolve, we change bits to better fit the zeitgeist and that’s normal. But these “though shalt change your language because I say so and I know better” wars are ridiculous.
To me the Moon will always be feminine and the Sun masculine, even if they're not gendered in English. So what? People that are bothered by this duality tacitly imply that one of these gender is inherently worse than the other, and speaks volumes about their assumptions and views of the world.
So what if fruit is female and pencils are male? How is that misogyny? Are fruits "weak"? Do they have "emotions"? No, saying it's rooted in misogyny is cultural and historical revisionism pushing an agenda.
Gender activism tries to make society more moderate and inclusive by taking an extremist position: culture will eventually settle towards a more moderate, but still progressive view of the matter.
I expect society to be more inclusive after these efforts, but I honestly do not want nor hope these extremist views to actually take hold. They're just a means to an end. I accept them in the hope they make a better world, but viewed by themselves they're just posturing bullshit.
A suggestive and imaginative theory, but wrong. Reality is always much more boring. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29043881>
As a non-native German speaker, I sometimes struggle with understanding speech (especially with thick accents). Knowing the gender lets me narrow down the possibilities of what a word might be, when I don't hear it all the way.
> they were chosen based on some gender association that often boils down to misogyny
No. They were explicitly not chosen for this reason. There are some exceptions maybe, but the whole debate is based on false assumptions.
There are languages which don't do this of course. I don't see any problems that affect one country but not the other. No.
Also what proof, what data? The polls are out there so why not check on them? There have been several of them and all of them had a majority against gender-neutral wording. If you wanna doubt this that's borderline conspiracy theory and I suggest you provide some data to refute those polls.
Surely that's all fantasy and you are right that there's a huge majority that supports gender-neutral wording.
That's the fanning of fries for brains. Enjoy your bubble.
Take care.
(giggle)
"assumptionist"... I think that was the term for some catholic order.
There's also the possibility of enumerating "Bürger" und "Bürgerin", which becomes quite tedious when it's used throughout longer texts.
In special cases it's possible to use the noun form of an adjective as in "Studierende" which has become the standard gender-neutral form of "students". As a German native speaker I never understood how "Studenten" has been perceived to exclude female students but that's how it is now. In the same vein people taking part in something are now called "Teilnehmende" while they were formerly called "Teilnehmer".
Personally I find all of this horrible although of course I am for equality, equal opportunity and equal pay.
Just stick to something known and which evolved after centuries of organic shaping, don't come up with tumblr-tier neographs like ə, 3, x, *.
Confirming, you are mistaken. English used to be 3-gendered (system m,f,n) like its linguistic predecessors and neighbours, only lost it in the 14th century with scant traces remaining. <https://i2.wp.com/antigonejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/202...>
Ille, illos, illa Le, les, los, las, etc
Romance languages inventing gendered articles from gendered demonstratives is always fun.
(Especially since my language, Malay, has no grammatical gender at all, not even in the third person; and have no regularized article.) [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_grammar#Demonstr...