1:47 that's a grat way to avoid using a specific gender fireman/firewoman = firefighter mailman/mailwoman = mailfighter garbageman/garbagewoman = garbagefighter ...
That is good for English (especially the firefighter one), though a solution for German is still needed. I would suppose the German version is the name of the workplace, followed by _Mitglied_ (member). Correct me if I'm wrong (I don't speak to much German), but from what I can tell by looking stuff up, _Mitglied_ is a neuter noun, so I think I could get away with saying something like _Feuerwehr-Mitglied_ (fire department member) or _Mail-Dienst-Mitglied_ (mail service member).
@@Hand-in-Shot_Productions people mit Glied are generally male. Okay this was a bad pun, your "Mitglied" solution would probably work in at least a lot of cases but the term "Mitglied" implies more like a voluntary participation than being an employee.
@@NonSurvivorOne I see: so volunteer firefighters are _Mitglied,_ but not people who work in the post industry, since they tend to be paid employees. I would have use "employee" were it not for that word being divided into two genders in German: masculine _Mitarbeiter_ and feminine _Mitarbeiterin._
@@Hand-in-Shot_Productions to use "Mitglied" or sth familiar is one way in the good direction, but still male in German. I found another good way: to emphasize the action not the person/being. Instead of using "Die Studenten" they use: "Die Studierenden" [the ones, who study]. I like this.
Oder die Tagesschau in ihrer unglaublichen eleganten Klugheit schrieb: "Urlaubende kehren aus Spanien zurück". Wären dann natürlich eigentlich Rückkehrende.
@@berulan8463 Plural, "die Urlaubenden", waren hier gemeint. Plural ist im Deutschen generell nicht genusmarkiert. Das ist wahrscheinlich der Grund, warum es so benutzt wird (auch wenn ich das nicht schön finde). Im Singular kann man es sich ebensogut sparen, aus ungefähr dem von dir genannten Grund. Es heißt dann zwar nicht zwingend "der", sondern kann ebensogut "die" heißen, aber man muss sich immer noch festlegen - was man ja vermeiden wollte. (Ich habe auch selten gesehen, dass es im Singular benutzt wird.)
Da hätte wohl jemand ganz schnell zurück in den Deutschkurs müssen XD Wobei, ich schlag Leute, die von "Salzstreuerinnen" reden. *Han Solo voice* "That's not how the German Language works?!"
I am a female. I am very lazy, therefore I opt for using the grammatical masculine form as the normal form for all of the social genders when you talk about a group of people. If you are talking about one single person, you can easily use the one of the grammatical genders available that fits best. But for the plural? Why so complicated? We are used to the difference between grammar and social gender. We know that if you are talking about "Die Katzen", you could refer to male and female cats. So why should we care if you say "die Köche"? We know that there could be women in that group just as we know it with other words.
many decades ago in school, we learned that for unspecified groups, mixed groups, and similar, the male version is used as default, and we were well aware of that. we also learned that there were some professions which already had a third version for the plural, eg _Kaufmann/Kauffrau/Kaufleute,_ _Feuerwehrmann/-frau/-leute,_ etc. then someone had the glorious idea that everything should be gender neutral and explicitly include all versions (which is a contradiction!?) and they started to always use an enumeration, like _Kaufmänner und Kauffrauen,_ even when there was a perfect word _Kaufleute_ already, and when that group had no males or no females in it (which then sounds ridiculous), no longer ever using _Kaufleute,_ and many people even forgot that there are already several alternatives (at least for some professions) which resulted in someone holding a speach and starting _"Liebe Feuerwehrmänner und _*_Feuerwehrmänninnen_*_ ..."_ and the more people use these new (presumable better) versions, the more they forget what we have learned and only think of all those that are included in explicit lengthy enumerations, but forget about our learned rule "default is male version", and thus no longer think that some _Verkäufer_ might be male OR female when not explicitly mentioned. thus (imho) all of this even lessens the general inclusion of everybody. i admit that quite often some professions were only seen as purely male or purely female, and some people didn't think of mixed groups when hearing the plural. but (again imho) it would have been much better to invest all this effort into increasing the awareness for these cases, instead of putting the burden on speakers who now have to glottal stop speaking about them. there are more alternatives too, but they all have one thing in common: they sound clumsy and completely artificial, reminding me of "1984 good speak", like what they did in some laws, eg _"zu Fuß Gehende"_ instead of _Fußgänger;_ and then you could have the same argument that _"Gehende"_ (they probably were thinking of _"gehende Person",_ with _die Person_ being gramatically female) sounds like only the female version and doesn't include males. *_I_* am either a _Fußgänger,_ or a _"zu Fuß Gehender", but not a _"zu Fuß gehende"_ btw: "Arzt" is a job description. will that now also be changed, and all male, female and divers doctors will officially have the profession of "AÄrzt|In(m/w/d)" in the future ? everything that is done excessively starts becoming ridiculous sometime ...
I just skip the gender inflection. I call anyone a "Leser" (or any other role) despite seeing their gender. If they rebel because of skipping their gender I call them "weiblicher Leser". (what they sometimes find weird, I don't know (grammatically) why ... 🤔) We already use this for excluding explicitely females with "an meine männlichen Leser". Funny thing is they always understand and cannot hide this fact but lie that they don't. 🤷♀
@@Anson_AKBErinnerst Du Dich an den Vogel, der eine Frau als "Krankenschwesterin" vorgestellt hat? Ich weiß nicht mehr, welche Sendung es war, hat aber lange für Unterhaltung gesorgt. 🤦😂
What i don't get is why it's always portrayed as negative that the male variant is often the default. You could easily phrase it as "the male isn't special enough to get a dedicated word".
yeah, that's one way to see it, but i think for many people it feels more like the male version is the default, "the gold standard", and the female version just an addition. Also many people want to include all genders more explicitly in their use of language and that's nice. Nobody is forced to do it. The people that get angry about gender-inclusive language the most are right-wingers because they use this as a proxy debate about the human rights of trans people.
@@Leofwine Plural „die“ sieht aber aus wie weiblich „die“, das wäre ja dann auch wieder sexistisch. Also dann das Singular, und dass Plural (mit einem Asi-s).
Asi ist wenn man "Alter" "Digga" und sogar "Freundchen" genannt wird. Aber ich kann verstehen dass manche sich etwas besseres finden, wenn jemand so redet. Ist schon gut, lass dich umarmen. Die bösen jugendlichen sind schon weg
I guess English speakers are just more chill with accepting words like "teacher" as the generic full stop rather than the generic masculine. Because the archaic feminine "teacheress" isn't used anymore, "teacher" doesn't imply gender... while "waiter" could, at least if put next to "waitress".
Yeah, unless the base word happens to "feel" gendered (like fireman and so on) we're much more likely to do away with the suffixed feminine forms, which I think makes sense. Without grammatical gender that invokes natural gender, the only thing making a word like actor "masculine" is the existence of an explicitly feminine word like actress, which has held on longer than teachress but is definitely on the outs these days.
@@nikobellic570 well all nouns withe the "er" ending or the latin "or" ending are originally masculine and describe someone as a maker/ actor. servant would be gender neutral, as - ans/- antis is the latin -ing form, which was in latin the same for all three gender. Therefore it is for example complete nonsense to replace Student by "Studierende" in German, as both forms are present participles of two different lamguages that are originally both gender neutral...
It would be extremely easy to just accept that the grammatical genus of a German word exists completely independently from the biological sex and the social gender. Then we could just talk normally again and it would actually include absolutely everyone, including non-binary. And I disagree that it implies that being male is the norm, because, as you correctly said, many nouns are also female and neuter. Most are male, okay, but that has nothing to do with the gender of the people. We could also just rename the grammatical genus. Let's call it category A, B and C instead of male, female and neuter. Problem solved. Most nouns are category A. That has no implication of biology or social gender identity.
That would be a nice and simple solution in theory, but in praxis it doesn't seem to work. Psychological studies have shown that the male (grammatical) form, even if it is intended as gender neutral, will still be perceived to imply masculinity. Unfortunetely humans are not 100% rational creatures. Check the comments by Archsinner for examples of the possible problems including a source.
@@HalfEye79 "Fachkraft" is, like "Person", an abstract expression. Nothing that provokes an image in your mind. So that's not what we are actually talking about here. It's more of a hyperonym, and the said problem doesn't usually occur in those.
@arnonuehm1: Yes, it does work. Those studies counted e. g. numbers of male/female famous athletes that were asked about using vs. ignoring the female grammatical forms in the questions. They completely ignored the effects of the percieved expectations by the inquirer by adding the female (grammatical) form, that are met by those who answered (so-called "social desirability" effect). A good example for bad science - and you do find a lot of those in psychology. I am saying this having a degree in this discipline...
Thanks for explaining "das Mädchen" correctly! I've seen so many German learners be confused about this. It's one of my favorite examples of the ever changing nature of languages: It used to be just the diminutive of "die Magd" when Magd still meant girl. But when Magd descended into meaning "maidservant", Mädchen took its place for girl.
@@melissaswan5073 Mädel is an alternative diminutive. While in standard German the diminutive is formed with -chen or -lein, in Southern German -el, -le or -li are used. In Swabian, Mädchen is thus Madle, in Bavarian Mädel/Mad(e)l and in Swiss German Maitli.
It is the deminutive of Maid. and just like in German, the same Diminutive exists in English: maiden. It is the same word, the same diminutive, just spelt slightly differently and without the ch of course..
Norwegian also have three grammatical genders, but we rarely have a 'female' version of professions, and those that exist are mostly seen as a bit antiquated nowadays. Even nurses (sykepleier, in German: Krankenpfleger) are gramatically masculine.
which is the way german should go towards. if you normalize this people will simply stop thinking about th fact that it's male and simply see it as the only version of the word
@@kevboard "stop thinking about the FACT that it's male" there is no such fact. If it were like you said that would mean that you would "create" a new form by eliminating the feminine -in stem. But what you are actually doing is give the generic form room to thrive, you don't invent it.
Personally I'd wish for us to just mentally separate grammatical genders from biological genders and use the shortest form available in our language. All these extra constructs to avoid making oneself open to attack by easily offended people just serve to make German sentences longer than they already are.
Yeah absolutely, I mean from a linguistic prospective (if we ignore social stuff) they're just categories - they could as easily be A, B, C rather than gendered language.
Factually this is already the case, genus ≠ sexus, but somehow some people disagree with that and try to change things for the sake of changing things, despite this being unnecessary and redundant.
@@Wheeljack2k Yes and that's exactly the problem. You cannot "plant" things like that in people's minds. Things like that have to sink in slowly and repeatedly. First step is to raise consciousness. How to achieve that? By being more aware and using language in a proper way. If we continue using it the same way as we always did, nothing will ever change.
Indeed! Linguists use the term "Noun Classes" which is not only a better description but less confusing. The Niger-Congo languages have anywhere from 10 to 26 noun classes - calling them "grammatical genders" is pointless and absurd.
I don't think a gender-neutral language will change the problems with gender equality. As the not use of the N word hasn't solved racism. I think that this discussion about gender-neutral language has annoyed a lot of people so a open discussion about problems like no binary gender has become impossible. Our problem aren't the words. If intended even the most beautiful word can become vicious. Lets stop to fiddle around with our language and start to solve the real problems.
I completely agree, replacing the term negroes with "colored people" or "people with a migration background" is just replacing a discriminatory term with another one.
I agree that gender neutral language does not just automatically solve gender inequality but I think you are underestimating the importance. Firstly, language is a primary way that we affirm people's gender identities, so if there is no language to refer to people who are nonbinary, then you have no choice but to misgender them which leads to people having genuine dysphoria. Additionally, you should consider what we know about linguistic relativity, which is the concept that a person's language heavily influences the ways in which they think about stuff. The English language used to address hypothetical people almost always as "he" unless the hypothetical person is doing something feminine. Our recent shift towards the word "They" instead genuinely has influence over how we come to expect different roles from people on the basis of gender. Additionally, saying that this discussion "annoys people" is bullshit because those people aren't annoyed by the language, they're "annoyed" by trans and nonbinary people. Getting rid of the language conversation doesn't do anything about that but allow them to continue to misgender people.
@@professionalamateurs8130 If you'd watched the video carefully you would now that in the German language affirmation of people's gender identities is not really working. And we are have a neuter to address no binary persons. And if language would "heavily influences the ways in which they think about stuff" Germany must be a much more patriarchic society then englisch specking countries because in Germany nearly every job designations is male. I'm not saying there is zero effect. But I think you are overestimating the effect. Eg for me as German the word Lehrer (male and base form of teacher) do not insist that a teacher is a man because my experiences teached me otherwise. So inside my head a teacher is not male even it is a male word in German. Lehrer is just a definition like green. And if I'm saying people get annoyed I'm not talking about some intolerant idiots. I'm talking partially about some very liberal people how would literally fight for everybody's right of to be whatever he she it like. Language is a very personal thing, for a lot of people it is even part of there identity, there origin. And saying "this is bullshit and there just annoyed by trans and nonbinary people" is exactly what had poisoned the discussion and now even people who otherwise would consider to change there language are pissed. Well done Sir (m,w,d)
yes, it didn't solve racism, but wouldn't you agree there is a difference between saying "a Black man" and saying the n-word? And i totally agree that you can make even innocuous words into insults if you use them right. That doesn't mean that slurs are suddenly fine. I have no idea how much gendered language actually shapes the thoughts of the people speaking it, but i can't blame anyone for trying to find new ways to express different genders. Sometimes i would like to know what the German language in a couple of decades would be like
I am a Portuguese native speaker from Brazil. In our country we are also facing this problem because Portuguese is a very gender-based language. Some people from non-binary community are trying to change the natural language to a gender-neutral language. But as we can see in German, in Portuguese the words become slightly unintelligible to the majority of people. Also we have pronunciation problems..
Same thing with Spanish. Our language, like yours, has masculine and female nouns and verbs and articles conjugated with each. It would be a new language all together. It just sounds weird.
@daniiel mlinarics some languages are more gender neutral than others. If I compare Portuguese and English, English is much more gender neutral than Portuguese. That's because in portuguese basically every word that ends with the letter "a" is feminine and words ending with "o" refers to masculine. Of course there's some few exceptions. In order to get a gender neutral word, speakes change this last letter to "e" or sometimes to "x". But in most cases, the word becomes unintelligible and/or sounds very weird to hear or speak. Based in what you said, I think your language is more gender based than Portuguese. We have some very common words that are naturally neutral like "eu" (I, myself) and "você" (you) which doesn't allow you to define a gender. But as you said there are languages where because it's structure, you have to define gender when you want to say "I, me, myself" or "you, yours" and that's a problem in this context.
There is actually a way, although not very common, to de-gender the German language: The Austrian artist Hermes Phettberg started to use the ending "-ys" for every plural noun where the generic masculinum would pose a problem. So for example "die Lehrer" would be "die Lehrys" or "die Verkäufer" would be "die Verkäufys". A German language didactician proposed in 2019 to use this method instead of the ones mentioned in the video. Let's see, if it catches on eventually... (I doubt it, it would be fun tho)
@@Taladar2003 As a German I can tell you that it exists tho and yes, it isn't really catching on ^^ I think of it more as a fun alternative than a serious thing
If anything it would be infinitely easier to introduce gender neutral elements to German language. Just find a neutral ending and you're good. In Polish language it's sadly more difficult. We often struggle with creating female equivalents for professions let alone gender neutral names
@@angelikaskoroszyn8495 Every word is gendered in German. Even words that are perceived as being neutral have a grammatical gender, usually male or female.
You think that German has a problem. In some Slavic languages noun, adjective and verb can conjugate. And if there is mix of genders in case, they always default to masculine (like in 'women(f) and children(n) sat in the room'): Men sat in room - Muškarci su sedeLI u sobi. Women sat in room - Žene su sedeLE u sobi. Children sat in room - Deca su sedeLA u sobi. Women and children sat in room - Žene i deca su sedeLI u sobi. Some people try be politically correct and try to include all genders. We have different state of mind - we know that no genders are discriminated for job position and keep speaking normally.
German has the generic masculine form as well, but this is more like the core of the problem than a solution. In the past, it was enough to mention only the grammatical male form and everybody knew it applied to people of all genders. But now, some women and transgender people feel discriminated because of that.
@@NonSurvivorOne Psychological experiments have shown that there's a bias towards men in people's perception when the masculine form is used. If that weren't the case, we wouldn't be talking about this all the time.
In German, adjectives also conjugate. And for many words, there are also male and female forms. And a mixed group of genders also default to masculine, and that's exactly what the language police has an issue with.
@@NonSurvivorOne Which is quite of funny, because a generic form for all is inclusive, while a set of separate forms is discriminating. These people claim to be against discrimination but do exactly that.
@@Nikioko I never understood how they claim fighting for equality when they at the same time deconstruct men being equally worthy as women but instead invent dozents of new genders. We wouldn't need equality if they hadn't divided society
Why is it acceptable to use Male + Female to refer to Non-binary people, when it is not acceptable to use a generic masculine or generic feminine? The BS about the Gendersternchen being all inclusive to me is an utterly stupid idea. Moreover, the German obsession with male and female versions of job titles has another effect, it puts extreme emphasis on the fact that the person in question is male or female. To many this is an unwanted effect since it comes with the connotation that being of the non-stereotypical gender is special and especially noteworthy but might also for many bring with them the connotations that it is something to be wary of. English and Dutch - just to name two closely related to German examples - have taken the route of using the generic masculine or generic feminine jobtitles for anyone. In the Netherlands and thus in Dutch we like to compare this to the diminutive, ie. it matters not if the grammatical gender of a word coincides with the gender of the person doing the job. As such in Dutch one would say "mevrouw de rechter" and "meneer de rechter" when addressing a judge (Dutch hasn't got a polite word of address for non-binary people yet, just like English (ie, that's still only got Sir and Madam)). And it's gotten so bad in German that there are various woke people who now get angry when a person such as myself (I am a transwomen) uses the word "Jurist" instead of "Juristin" (in German) or "juriste" (in Dutch) to describe myself, and then go on to call me a "fake transgender" or worse. Also, thanks for the video, but would you please use the term "Transgender people" instead of "transsexual people"? The difference is tiny, but of immense value for transgender people since the use of "transsexual" puts an extreme emphasis on the changing of genitals and seemingly stimulates the obsession of cisgender people with what us transgender people have in our pants. Trans people are just as valid in their identity if they haven't yet, or don't wish to undergo gender reassignment surgery.
Ugh. This entire ideas of, "grammatical 'gender'," really pisses me off. The only reason we call the damn things "genders"is because of a mistranslation of "genus" from Latin into, "gender," instead of, "category." And Linguistically, they _are_ called "Noun Classes." (The Niger-Congo languages have anywhere from 10 to 26 of them.) In German, the term is „(Nominatives) Genus“ … if you talked about „grammatisches Geschlecht“ people would wonder why you thought nouns had penises and vaginas. 😆 You could just add readily name the 3 Noun Classes of German after other prominent members: Canine (der Hund), Feline (die Katze), Equine (das Pferd) Lunar (der Mond), Solar (die Sonne), Cosmic (das Weltall) Spoon (der Löffel), Fork (die Gabel), Knife (das Messer) …I could go on. 😉 After all, using any of those labels makes about as much sense as implying that nouns have genitals. 😆 Once I was fluent in German, I stopped thinking of the 3 German noun classes as sex and started thinking of them in terms of word endings.
Yeah. Even in linguistics, "grammatical gender" is simply a subset of noun class system which divides nouns into 2 or 3 classes, most commonly referred to as masculine-feminine-neuter. Other names for these classes do exist, like masculine-feminine-common, human-animate-inanimate, or even class 1-class 2-class 3 but for some reason we're stuck with masculine-feminine-neuter from that mistranslation. This three-class system is a very Indo-European thing, by the way. Other language families either have more classes (like the Niger-Congo languages like you said) or don't have them at all (like the Austronesian languages).
@@aarspar Indeed! I dod know everything that you said, so Thanks for Adding it! ^_^ [I will admit, however, to intentionally omitting what you said in your first 2 sentences. I have a strong aversion to calling the 2- and 3-class Indo-European noun class systems, "grammatical genders," because I feel that (1) It causes waaaay more confusion than it's worth for students learning a non-English Indo-European language; (2) As your own comment reveals, calling them "grammatical genders" is _very_ Eurocentric for a variety of reasons; and (3) It makes an implicit connection between the grammar of a [European] langauge's nouns and genitals, which is _utterly Barking Mad._ And that's without even bringing in any sociopolitical issues. ^_^ ]
Firstly, I like that you cover this topic as it is rarely explained in English. However, you should mind your vocabulary. "Transexuals" is a very old-fashioned word and is often seen as an insult, transgender is the preferred term. Secondly, these people are not necessarily non-binary, that is a separate category which has nothing to do with physical sex. A bit nitpicky sure, but important nonetheless.
I think using "transsexual" might be a Germanism on his part, since the German language doesn't distinguish between Sex and Gender (which is the case for most languages).
@@k-techpl7222 Are you sure about that? Looking at simple online dictionaries, 'transexual' gets translated to 'transsexuelle' whereas 'transgender' gets translated to 'transgender.' Additionally, when looking at the German statistics in Google Trends, 'transgender' has consistently been used more frequently than 'transsexual.' Putting that together I think it might be more of an age thing, with older folks sticking to the old term (even if they do not necessarily oppose the trans community). The same thing is the case with Dutch, which I'm more familiar with.
If I am correct term transexual is term coined in time where difference between sex and gender was not fully realised. Today some people still use it to reffer to people who go throw medical transition but even that meaning is slowly disapearing.
I think they both could work, Transgender = there's a mismatch between the gender and sex, therefore a "crossing" relationship between the two Transsexual = Someone who changed their bodily features to match the opposite sex, therefore "crossing" from one sex to another That's just my understanding though, I might be wrong.
'Transsexual' is considered by most to be an outdated term. 'Transgender' is considered to be a more accurate and inclusive term that the majority of trans people prefer. Great video!
Usually I just use the maskulin form of any human-specific word, like "der Lehrer / die Lehrer" and obviously mean all genders. I see the discrimination and the intention to find a better solution, but the word "Lehrer*innen" with the weird break is not my type of speaking. :) I think, the german language should not be made any longer; a lot of german sentences are already too long for learners. :) Great video by the way!
@T. K. And who does that? Apart from some East German elderly women, I have never noticed such behavior in anyone. And it always comes across as... a bit strange. Not only for me.
@@AndersGehtsdochauch I notice this all the time. In women of all ages. With some exceptions, though (teachers, social workers, pastors...). Strange for some people, sure. But just for some.
How about we just rename the grammatical genders male into elam, female into elamef, neuter into reteun and acceppt that elam is usually the default form. Really the problem isn't the language, it's understanding the arbitrary nature of the nomenclature. We will be discussing next that in math any number higher than one should be made equal to one, otherwise it would discriminate against minorities. Fractions should be included in binary code. And companies making profit will write numbers of color.
Sorry, that's b.s. Why? Because when you talk about people, grammatical gender is not an abstract entity. Grammatical gender transports meaning. This even applies to inanimate objects. The ideas associated with "sun" and "moon", for example, differ greatly depending on whether the article is masculine or feminine in the respective language. And your are ignoring the recepients of language. It makes a huge difference for girls whether you speak about "Physiker" or "Physikerinnen und Physiker". Studies have shown the importance of explicitely addressing women and girls over and over. It might not make a difference for you, but for others it does! And if it wouldn't make any difference we could just switch to a generic feminine form. In most cases the male version would be automatically included in the feminine word.
I happen to live in 4 (and at times 5) different languages. The biggest difficulty in translation and interpretation is when someone uses what is now called 'non binary pronouns' . In English 'they' ist used instead of 'he' or 'she'. That certainly does not work with all languages.
Interesting fact about Hungarian (at least as it relates to translation)... Despite having inclusive forms for "he/she/it" equivalents, translating software like Google defaults to masculine or sometimes God forbid "They", despite contextually there being no mention of a physical person or living being.
Das eigentliche Problem ist eher, dass die Leute nicht verstehen (wollen), dass Genus ≠ Sexus ist. Daher sehe ich das Problem mit „der Raum ist voller Ärzte“ nicht, da „Arzt - Ärzte“ nun mal die Grundform des Wortes ist, die zwar mit der männlichen Form fast immer deckungsgleich ist (maskulinum generalis; es gibt aber auch ein paar Ausnahmen), dies aber definitiv keinerlei „Sexismus“ darstellt. Arzt/Ärzte muss nicht zwangsläufig „nur Männer“ heißen, es ist ebenfalls die korrekte Form für eine gemischte Anzahl and Ärzten, und das nicht nur im Deutschen, sondern auch in anderen Sprachen wie z.B. Spanisch (männliche Form = Mischform und nur Männer, weibliche Form = nur Frauen). Alleinig Ärztin/Ärztinnen ist hingegen eine exklusive Form, die definitiv die Anwesendheit von Männern ausschließt. Grammatikalisch ist die Grundform des Wortes im Plural (und theoretisch sogar im Singular, „Sie ist ein Arzt“, ist aber eher selten) ausreichend, und da Genus ≠ Sexus ist, ist es auch nicht sexistisch, da sich die Sprache nicht um dein faktisches Geschlecht (Sexus) schert, sondern um das Geschlecht (Genus) des Wortes selbst, was nicht zwangsweise zu dem eigenen Geschlecht (sowohl faktisches als auch „soziales“) passen muss (siehe z.B. „die Hebamme, die Krankenschwester“ auch für Männer). Sternchen, Binnenmajuskel, Sprachpausen und andere Einschübe verunstalten die Sprache eher, als dass sie helfen, und selbst bei etwaigen sonstigen Geschlechtern, seien sie physisch (Gendefekte, Umoperierte) oder mental (Transexuelle), ist dies unnötig, da wie gesagt Genus ≠ Sexus ist. Bei Aussagen wie „das Tierheim ist voller Hasen“ macht auch keiner ein Fass auf und beharrt auf ein „voller Hasen und Häsinen“, da das „Hasen“ bereits die ausreichende Mischform für eine größere Anzahl an Hasen ist, obgleich des Geschlechts des Tiers. Doppelformen sind optional (und eigentlich redundant), sind aber jedoch die einzig grammatikalisch korrekten Formen, wenn verglichen mit Sternchen, Unterstrichen und sonstigen Undingen.
Richtig. Man denkt bei einem Satz wie "der Raum ist voller Arbeitskräfte" auch nicht, dass alles Frauen sind, weil "die Arbeitskraft" weiblich ist. Die Menschen sind sich ja einig, dass sich Sprache ändern kann/ändert. Das Problem ist aber, dass einige wohl denken, die Änderungen wurden dem gemeinen Volk alle vorgegeben. Sie sehen halt nicht, dass sich die Sprache durch die Art der Benutzung ändert.
@@HalfEye79 Das größte Problem das ich sehe ist, dass alles von jetzt auf gleich forciert werden muss, und wer nicht spurtet, wird direkt als Sexist, Masochist oder sonstiges diffamiert, weil man ja angeblich gegen Feminismus, Gleichheit und „Fortschritt“ sei, obwohl die Grammatik und Orthographie auf deiner Seite sind. Wie gesagt, anstatt dass diese ganze Sprachverschandelung betrieben und gelernt wird, sollten eindeutige Unterschiede zwischen Genus und Sexus klipp und klar aufgezeigt werden, sodass jedermann dies versteht und nicht mehr dort Problem sucht oder „aufzeigt“, wo sie mit richtigem Wissen per se gar nicht existieren. Dass im Singular eher die geschlechter-spezifische Form benutzt wird („Er sagt, er sei Arzt“ - „Sie sagt, sie sei Ärztin“), finde ich persönlich absolut natürlich und nachvollziehbar, da der Singular etwas persönliches ist, wobei die generische Form („Er sagt, er sei Arzt“ - „Sie sagt, sie sei Arzt“) grammatikalisch nicht falsch ist, sie im Singular jedoch archaisch geworden ist. Im Plural empfinde ich dies durch die Doppelformen hingegen lästig und unnatürlich, da man nicht lange um den heißen Brei rumreden will, sondern dem Gegenüber seine Gedanken mitteilen will. Wer das machen will, kann das gerne tun, aber es ist aus grammatikalischer Sicht eher redundant (da die Grundform beide Geschlechter beinhaltet) und sollte daher auch optional sein. Störend empfinde ich auch die Nennung der weiblichen Form als erstes, gefolgt von der männlichen Form, da somit die Form des Wortes, welche mit der Grundform deckungsgleich ist, untergeordnet erwähnt wird, was schon sehr befremdlich wirkt. Bei unterschiedlichen Wörtern hingegen empfinde ich die Nennung des weiblichen Wortes als oftmals natürlicher, wie bei Damen und Herren, Mama und Papa, aber nicht bei Bruder und Schwester. Denke letzteres ist allerdings der Gewohnheit zu verschulden, und ist dementsprechend definitiv subjektiv.
@@HalfEye79 Die Arbeitskraft ist ein abstrakter Oberbegriff und daher ein irreführendes Beispiel, bzw eigentlich überhaupt kein Beispiel für das, worum es hier geht. Sonst könnte man ja immer die feminine Plural-Form benutzen, und niemand würde je an Frauen denken. Probier das mal aus, es wird schiefgehen. So findest du selbst raus, was ich meine, warum deine Beispiele hier alle hinken. Dann musst du es mir nicht glauben und kannst beruhigt schlafen gehen.
@@HalfEye79 Genau, und da sich die Art der Sprache nur durch Benutzung ändert, wird es Zeit, dass wir das in die Tat umsetzen. Manche Rüpelbegriffe wie das N-Wort waren früher ganz "normal", heute sind sie das nicht mehr. Das ist nicht vom Himmel gefallen, sondern kam zustande, indem ein Problem erkannt und angegangen wurde. Wären alle Menschen solche Respektverweigerer, die nichts ändern wollen weil sie persönlich ja nichts stört, dann wären solche Rüpelbegriffe heute noch "normal".
@@AndersGehtsdochauch Richtig. Die "Arbeitskraft" ist genau so ein abstrakter Oberbegriff, wie auch der "Arbeiter". Warum soll dann aber letzterer gegendert werden, ersterer aber nicht?
The problem is that noun composed of truncated verb +"er" are grammatically masculine. In German, some people resent that because of the article "der" and demand that there must be a female form. In English, however, that is no problem as there is only one article "the". There are a few female forms in English like "actress", but nobody would demand that a female teacher has to be called a "teacheress".
The issue with the asterisk/colon solution is also creating words that don't exist. For example if you do it for doctors... "Ärzt*in", you now created the word "Ärzt" which isn't a thing so I am fully on the side of just sticking to saying "Ärzte und Ärztinnen", it's literally just 2 extra words we should all have the time for that until we can find a truly neutral solution.
Or you could just use the male form as neutral plural as it has always been for many millions of years before that Twitter SJW PC culture bubble started talking too loudly about oh how oppressive it is.
Totally agree. IMO the asterisk or colon should only (if ever) be used in cases when it perfectly makes sense, e.g. "die Schüler*innen". Both "die Schüler" and "die Schülerinnen" are actual words. However, it still looks informal and I'd rather use the more wordy version. And in spoken German that's another can of worms. Some people don't put a long enough pause before the "-in" or "-innen" which makes it sound like you are specifically using the female version, e.g. "Schülerinnen".
I don't think that was twitter or the more extreme and reactionary fringes of the third wave (which I'll assume you mean by "Twitter SJW PC culture bubble") but second wave feminism. Which doesn't make it any less daft in light of nonbinary people existing but I can see how one may get the idea that it could be a good idea if you're still using a very binary worldview, which the second wave very much was using (along with gender-essentialism as a way to rebut restrictions on what clothing women could wear, which of course turned out to be a somewhat transphobic idea...but that's an essay for another day). I suppose a lot of it can be summed up as "It seemed like a good idea at the time".
diminutives are male in Russia -- so in Russian "child" is male even if it's refering to a girl ((however most English complain about the German word))
The masculine is already the norm. ‘Jemand hat _seine_ Jacke vergessen.’ ‘Wem _seine_ Jacke ist das?’ Lehrer*innen is unnecessarily long and it sounds weird
The masculine is indeed the norm. And that is what we are trying to change. Get over it. You don't have to use neutral forms, but it would be polite if you did so. And you will get used to hear "Lehrer*innen" until it doesn't sound weird anymore. It is a bit longer, but it is also a necessity to change the masculine norm - therefore, it is not "unnecessarily long".
In Spanish we’re having a similar problem, though I’d say it’s a little bit worse because all words are either female or male. When people are trying to refer to something that can be male or female they typically write: - Both versions of the noun: Maestra/o (teacher) - Replace the letter that denotes the gender with an x or an @: Bomberx, Bomber@ (firefighter). The problem with this approach is that words become unpronounceable Now as to how we refer to non-binary people, there really isn’t a solution yet, and it may not come for a while because, at least where I live, people aren’t really accepting of non-binary people, though some people are starting to use a third no-binary gender. This gender uses the elle pronoun and uses the e letter to represent a noun’s gender: El es un doctor (He is a doctor) Ella es una doctora (She is a doctor) Elle es une doctore (They are a doctor)
The funny thing is in Polish - the feminine form was widely abandoned during the Communist era and now, even though we know much more about non-binary in gender etc. it is being slowly reintroduced, because… well, easier language is not something you should have presumably :P
And tbh, standardizing everything to the masculine form used for everybody is probably what the gendered languages are most likely to do, as these forms are mostly the shortest and therefore the most convenient.
@@naruciakk Well, the history of courtesy, humanity and respect isn't really packed with choosing the most "convenient" things only. If e.g. there's only one *xy* left on the table and I want it, the most convenient thing for me to do would be, just take it. But courtesy requires me to ask the others first whether they want it. How inconvenient, in some way, isn't it! lol
@@naruciakk If everything was standardised and reduced to "just the male forms", would those forms still be male forms at all? They would cease to be male forms and would end up being the only and therefore a neutral form. Since the male form is usually shorter than the female one, it would be more efficient to choose the male over the female form for being a generic neutral form.
@@TheZett Well, yes, that was the point I was trying to make :P. Make the easiest form the only and gender-neutral form and don't try to force people to use some constructed ones that no one would use anyway. And tbh, gramatical genders as a whole aren't problematic here. What's the problem with the feminine Katze for example. The problem is when it is about a person. @Anders Gehtsdochauch The language however is mostly about convenience, because trust me - no one is going to use some inefficient artificial grammatical forms.
Es ist wirklich sehr interessant, was sich da in den vergangenen Jahren tut. Als ich klein war, ging der Trend sehr stark in Richtung egalitären Umgangs miteinander, und es bot sich an, für diesen Zweck das angelsächsische „you" zu übernehmen, d. h. alle wurden unterschiedslos geduzt, um sich von gefühlt verlogenen bürgerlichen Umgangsformen zu distanzieren. Als das irgendwann einmal fast alle fast immer taten, wurde klar, dass es so auch langweilig ist. In der modernen Debatte schwingt, meistens unausgesprochen, mit, dass differenzierte Sprache mit nuancierten Formen des gegenseitigen Umgangs irgendwie doch wichtig zu sein scheint - bloß wie macht man das? Das Deutsche hat sich ja viele Differenzierungsmöglichkeiten aus den älteren indoeuropäischen Sprachen erhalten (eben zum Beispiel die drei Nominalklassen), und ich persönlich fände es schade, auf solche Möglichkeiten der feinen Unterschiede zu verzichten. Es wäre wahrscheinlich auch kontraproduktiv, wenn es einem gerade darum geht, für möglichst jede Gesprächssituation den am besten geeigneten Rahmen zu finden. Manchmal muss ich an mittelalterliche Höflinge, spanische Hidalgos oder französische Musketiere denken, die bereit waren, sich für jede auch nur geahnte Unhöflichkeit sofort zu duellieren, was mir der momentanen, recht gereizten Atmosphäre zu entsprechen scheint. Ich vermute, dass, je mehr Leute sich für die Möglichkeiten der Sprache ( in unserem Fall der deutschen Sprache, in der doch wirklich wahnsinnig viele Dinge möglich und sagbar sind) begeistern, ohne gleich polemisch zu werden oder Anderen bösen Willen zu unterstellen, ganz famose neue Wendungen und Formulierungen aufkommen werden. "The game, Mrs. Hudson, is on."
das was du ansprichst mit dem trend zum dutzen hin finde ich seehr spannend und würde sehr gerne mehr darüber erfahren!:) was och nach dem lesen noch gerne hinzufügen wollen würde ist, dass das was du als gereizte stimmung/gereiztheit ganz richtig erkennst nun auch nichts ist, was menschen zum spaß ausdrücken... hinter jeder emotion steckt ein grund und wenn es um sprache und unsichtbarmachung der eigenen lebensrealität oder gar identität durch sprache geht, die eben so gar nicht "mitdenkt" wie das so oft behauptet wird, da kann mensch schon mal wütend werden... ich finde es schade, dass in solchen depatten wut oft abgetan wird oder verurteilt, anstatt dahinter zu blicken und sich (oder die menschen selbst) zu fragen, wieso sie denn so wütend sind und sich versuchen hineinzuversetzen. als mann, der die meisten privilegien von geburt an als selbstverständlich mitbekommt ohne sie vlt selbst auch je wahrzunehmen, da "mann" nie diskriminiert wurde oder nur "mitgedacht" ist das zum beispiel sehr schwierig, da einfach zu sagen man finde es halt "schöner/unkomplizierter"... meiner meinung nach sollte bequemlichkeit nicht auf kosten von diskriminierung verhandelt werden. es zeigt sich z.B. sehr interessant und amüsant wie ich finde, wie aufgebracht männer plötzlich sind, wenn in Reden z.B. einfach das generische Femininum verwendet wird... da funktioniert das "ja aber ihr seid doch mitgemeint" ja auch nicht ;) es gibt im netz genug betroffene die sich dazu äußern, denen mensch auch einfach mal zuhören könnte:) einfach mal youtubes oder googles suchfunktion betätigen
Ich habe eine Idee: Lasst uns einfach bei Mehrheit den weiblichen Artikel nehmen und das generische Maskulinum. So können sich alle angesprochen fühlen.
Most forms of Dutch have only two genders, common and neuter, where common represents nouns that were formerly masculine or feminine. But it has suffixes for female individuals much like German does, as well. The trend in Dutch has to be to stop using words with such suffixes, and use the more unmarked, basic form. What was once a masculine gendered word becomes a non-gendered word. This can be used for German as well: both "der Lehrer" and "die Lehrer". Some people may argue that it's sexist to choose the old masculine form as the new default all the time. But one may also wonder why the more basic, unmarked form was always given the masculine gender in the first place, and why feminine forms are always derived from masculine forms. In this sense, it feels more sexist to use the suffixes, and more egalitarian to "reclaim" the basic form for all genders.
English is much less gendered now than German or Dutch, but we do the same. We used to use actor for men and actress for women, but now tend to use actor for either.
Hot take, german doesnt have a male version of job titles. "in diesem Krankenhaus arbeiten 30 Ärzte". No one would read this as "oh, why are they employing only male doctors". "Mein Kind ist Arzt" - "Oh, sie haben also einen Sohn?" Again, no one.
Disagree. In the first example I would assume there are 30 male doctors at the hospital and would expect the number of female or nonbinary doctors to follow in the next sentence. In the second example I would assume the child to be male or potentially nonbinary but definitely not female.
Ich bin der letzte Mensch, der nicht offen für verschiedenste Geschlechter wäre. Aber das in unserer Sprache abzubilden ist fast unmöglich. Interessanterweise habe ich mich niemals als Frau benachteiligt oder ausgegrenzt gefühlt wenn jemand (besonders bei Berufsgruppen) von Lehrern, Busfahrern und Ärzten sprach, denn in meinem Kopf war völlig klar das damit die Menschen aller Geschlechter dieses Berufs gemeint sind. Ich kann auch gut verstehen, dass Menschen die sich als Minderheit fühlen gern darauf aufmerksam machen, dass die existieren und gleichberechtigt/anerkannt sein wollen. Aber das erreicht man m.E. weniger über Sprache. So fände ich es beispielsweise gut, wenn Transgender Personen bzw. Hermaphroditen im Ausweis ein D statt M oder W tragen dürfen, auch (m/w/d) in Anzeigen finde ich total korrekt. Kürzlich argumentierte eine Freundin, als ich mich über den "gluttural stop" aufregte "Wieso, Du sagst doch auch Spiegelei ohne Probleme zu haben, da setzt Du auch zwischen Spiegel und Ei ab.".......sie sah nicht, warum ich der Ansicht war das sei kein gültiger Vergleich. Dann argumentieren Leute wieder mit "nur weil wir irgendwas IMMER schon so gemacht haben muss es nicht richtig sein, Sprache lebt und entwickelt sich". Ja. Okay. Das ist korrekt. Sprachen sind nicht statisch. Das ist aber doch kein Grund sie zu "verhunzen" nur weil Frauenrechtlerinnen immer noch nicht verstehen, dass sie ihre Ziele längst erreicht haben ....ehm okay nee, jetzt wird es politisch, lach. Und ein Roman ist es auch schon. Also es ist klar..........ich wollte mit dieser Wall of Text einfach nur sagen "ich finde *innen auch überzogen".
Given that Swiss German does not have the glottal stop that is found in German German (the one that is inserted before morpheme-initial stressed vowels), I wonder if the glottal stop solution would work at all there?
Funnily enough, in Russian the problem first appeared in the first half of the 20th century and is back now. When it comes to professions then-femenists somewhat successfully pushed for masculine-as-default under the premise that nobody would discriminate against them by looking at their job title alone. Now though, a weird subset of modern feminists push for the opposite, as they specifically want for their sex to be visible in their titles. The weird part is that they are adamant that specifically the suffix k should be used to form all the feminine forms in all cases, insisting that it is "grammatically correct". It is in fact not. Normally it is only used with a specific declension and in combination with specific vowels. I've seen the world "uchitelka" used for "teacher" instead of neutral-masculine "uchitel' or standard-femenine "uchitel'nitsa". Considering that the feminine form "uchilka" exists, and has a dismissive/offensive ring to it, I don't know how or why they came up with this one specifically. For some reason they are okay with their version, but find the standard one prejorative. I've also spotted occasional incorrect uses of feminine forms with professions where both masculine and feminine forms exist, but have different meanings. I'm specifically talking about the words mashinist and mashinistka, where the first one means train or tram driver, regardless of sex, and the second one means "typist", again, for both sexes. All of that is fairly interesting to observe, and I try to stick to the sidelines and maintain neutrality as much as I can, but I admit that when you happen to just be speaking and someone starts correcting you by appealing to non existent linguistic authority, it's very difficult for me to hold back my background in linguistics and not to dwell into lengthy explanations of the whole matter, for fear of appearing to be a bigot or a passionate idiot.
Gerade noch ein schönes Beispiel gefunden (WDR) : ruclips.net/video/qeH0u4vpSIQ/видео.html Der Knacklaut der Reporterin bei 4 : 00 klingt für mich hier viel seltsamer als die Verwendung des generischem Maskulinums durch die Interviewte bei 4 : 12.
Switch to finnish! We have none of those articles to worry about and only one word for he&she. If you want to make a point of a person's gender you need to say a male person or a female teacher. We don't really use miss/mrs Smith type of articles either because your maritial status is irrelevant. Our language has been equal and gender neutral for a long time, there's still few words like chairman that aren't equal, but we're ahead of nearly every other language in the equality issues.
Lucky you. The issue is just about the plural, it is in general a plural of the masculin form but includes all and is regarded gender neutral. Only if you want to express a plural of only females you use a female pluralform like in french or spanish. But some regard this already as a form of gender discrimination.
The existence of nonbinary folk is only an "issue" because morons can't accept that the base form is _obviously_ the inclusive form. "Lehrer" = "a person who teaches (gender not specified)".
@@theuncalledfor Imagine if people refer to you using word gendered in opposite way than you want. It feels incredibly invalidating like everyone is telling you you are liar.
@@petrfedor1851 It's only "gendered" because idiots like you have _decided_ to consider it gendered. You are getting offended at others because of your poor decision.
- Angela Merkel ist die erste Bundeskanzlerin. (Angela Merkel is the first (female) chancellor.) - Angela Merkel ist die neunte Bundeskanzlerin. (Angela Merkel is the ninth chancellor.) Both sentences are correct! :D Now the question: How do you answer this question correctly? "Die wievielte Bundeskanzlerin ist Angela Merkel?" or... how do you ask that question without it being ambiguous? :D
My opinion is that it's the best way to use the generic maskulinum. That means that the words that are said in maskulin Version refers to the addressed group regardless of their gender, sex or whatever. Yes there are two options then to address women, that is a bit unfair for men and all the other people, but I think ok as the disadvantage isn't that big but the benefit is extreme. Regarding the argument that women and other people don't feel addressed then, here are some ideas: Nobody was talking about banning the gendering German. You are still allowed to use it, please do it wisely but I would suggest to leave the decision to the people. For example: Feel free to use the gender star in job announcements or advertisements. It would be cool of you don't have to do, but it would be recommended to do it in this special case. It's mostly not too complex and good understandable. After the title you can switch back to the generic maskulinum to make it easier for everybody. On law texts I would suggest to always use the generic maskulinum as the texts are complicated with a lot of roles anyway. And it doesn't matter whether people FEEL addressed, they are and judges should be smart enough to know that. Regarding the argument that it could cause confusion to women whether they are meant or not, well then these Women need better education. If we do it we should use the generic maskulinum in the right way. If we day "Lehrer" we really mean teachers and not "non-female teachers". If you want to clarify the sex/gender, you should use an adjective, otherwise you confuse a lot of people.
In some english accents (like mine) some Ts are glottalised, like "butter (bu'er)", or "glottal (glo'al)". And we dont repersent all butter with a hiccup, it's just taken as normal.
Yes, but as an addition to a plethora of other words, it begins to sound like a hiccup - "Firemen" "firewomen" "fire'women", with the final having a glottal stop.
im no german speaker, but wouldnt using “-person” like in english be a good solution? is it awkward for german speakers? does the fact that its grammatically feminine cause problems for people who dont identify as female?
The issue is, there are words having a differnt meaning just because of a different gender or are singular or plural depending on the article. Exampel: Der Lehrer (teacher) is a singular masculin subject but can be a male or female, die Lehrer is plural, masculin and feminin teachers. Only Lehrerin is singular for a feminin teacher and Lehrerinnen is the plural. Using person would be difficult, because it sound very artificial and the word person itself has a feminin article: Die Person. Therefore, people who are offended by the masculin subject "der Mensch" (the human) are offended by the femenin "Die Person" (the person) too. Even more, using the pronoun "er" for Mensch or "sie" for Person, both are definite masculin and feminin. The whole discussion is an artificial conflict in genderism. Political and social issues are now elevated into a discussion about grammar. The easy solution in my point of view would be male subject having a masculin form, female subjects a feminin and everyting else a neuter form. That would be logical and even a 3 year old would understand this rule. So, a bull is male, a cow is female and a calf is neutral ( in most cases that is already the case in German language, with some exceptions. Every other subject like door, car, desk, spoon etc. would become neutral.
The issue here is that the "gender" aka genus of words had originally nothing to do with (biological) sex or gender. (Indo-European is pretty well studied.) They just became associated with one. It may have been smarter to reduce the feminine forms and push the shorter maskulinum as the generic form like in English.
@T. K. Maybe because English has in general a more straight grammatical structure and a modernized sample of word- or in opposite: because German is still a much more traditional language?
In German, the term is „(Nominatives) Genus“ … if you talked about „grammatisches Geschlecht“ people would wonder why you thought grammar had penises and vaginas. 😆 Linguistically, they're more properly called "Noun Classes." The Niger-Congo languages have anywhere from 10 to 26 of them.
"Liebe Bürger..." (genndering makes me sick) "He, Leute!" ..... and yes you can even avoid adressing people ---- a common practice from Nothern Germany is "ich mach mal so" (then you knock somewhere - like on a table and that's it) ... it's possible to get what you want without adressing one with "Sie" (which is a troubling pronoun) etc. .
A real first world problem for woke people(-innen). A person is a more abstract concept like a legal entity, but a man is flesh and blood. Latin words are always distant and sophisticated.
I fail to understand why this should be a problem at all? If you believe in equally of people from different genders the words you use, the songs you listen to or festivals you celebrate doesn't matter. It's like Christmas, it's supposed to be a religious ceremony in its roots (Christian and before that seasonal festival from Europe's pagans) but it's perfectly normal for Atheists or Agnostics to celebrate it too. Symbols and words doesn't matter that much as long as our beliefs are not sexist or racist. If we were talking about some words or symbols that have no meaning beside their offensive usage such as the word "negro" changing it was legit but this is an entire language we wanna change!
The issue is that some words used to not be perceived as insulting, such as „negro“ meaning „black“. Just look at the word „queer“, which used to be used as an insult and was presumably „reclaimed“ by transsexuals as an „empowering“ word, instead of being used as an insult. By default a word only has as much power/meaning as you are willing to give it, and if you aren’t willing, then it is not necessarily an exclusively insulting word.
Icelandic, Faroese, and Norwegian still use all three grammatical genders. Danish has merged the neuter with masculine, and Swedish has merged masculine with feminine (except for the pronouns).
Yes, it is complicated... my guess is: What we need is not a "solution", but a lot of tolerance - with every speaker. I personally will not give up my way of speaking, and so should anybody else - whatever their way of expressing themselves is. A common way of speaking will evolve, eventually.
Wasn't that what we've been trying for a few thousand years now? Lack of awareness isn't something we should by any means try to persevere, if it's at all possible, once the awareness has come up.
@@AndersGehtsdochauch Well, we tried for a long time, and comparing my life with that of the average person 1.000 years ago, we were pretty successful - so that's the way to go, I should say. If this "awareness" is a real thing and indeed more than the hobby of a rather eloquent minority, it will establish itself, eventually. For now, the surveys on this matter speak a very clear language.
Describe it and use the plural. "Wir suchen lehrende Fachkräfte". “We are looking for teaching professionals”. Weird and awkward? Yes! The best solution I can think of? again yes! 😀
First time I heard a binnen I or asterisk pronounced was at a Judith Butler talk. Made me go "Huh, so that's what that sounds like". Edit: Judith Butler did the talk in German btw, which was a lovely gesture but also made it hard to follow because of subpar acoustics in the venue and accented speech.
One solution I heard was to use nominalised adjectives. In the same way that Deutsche works for both male/female (and neuter), you could have der/die Lehrende, der/die Feurkämpfende, der/die Bürgershafthabende...
That's a good explanation. For my feeling, the problem is made up artificially. Some came up with the idea "teacher" comes with the idea of being a man. I say "some", cause there has never been a survey among language users (Germans), if they necessarily think on a certain gender, when talking about a teacher. It's more a precocious prevention of the possibility to not think on both genders, initialized by some activists. You could go to the "Friseur" (anonymously, male) and it was kind of normal, you were most often serviced by a women. There are some biased professions like carpenter or nurse, who tend to have a more male or female picture in mind, since only one gender usually picks this job.
"Wenn Berufe in einer geschlechtergerechten Sprache dargestellt werden (Nennung der männlichen und weiblichen Form, zum Beispiel „Ingenieurinnen und Ingenieure“ statt nur „Ingenieure") schätzen Kinder typisch männliche Berufe als erreichbarer ein und trauen sich selbst eher zu, diese zu ergreifen. Zu diesem Ergebnis kommen Psychologinnen und Psychologen an der Freien Universität Berlin: In zwei Experimenten lasen sie 591 Grundschülerinnen und -schülern Berufsbezeichnungen entweder in geschlechtergerechter oder in männlicher Sprachform vor und ließen die Kinder die Berufe bewerten. Die Ergebnisse der Studie wurden jetzt in der Fachzeitschrift „Social Psychology“ veröffentlicht."
And an abstract in English: "In this study, the authors tested a linguistic intervention to strengthen children's self-efficacy toward stereotypically male occupations. Two classroom experiments with 591 primary school students from two different linguistic backgrounds (Dutch or German) showed that the presentation of occupational titles in pair forms (e.g., Ingenieurinnen und Ingenieure, female and male engineers), rather than in generic masculine forms (Ingenieure, plural for engineers), boosted children's self-efficacy with regard to traditionally male occupations, with the effect fully being mediated by perceptions that the jobs are not as difficult as gender stereotypes suggest"
@@Arcsinner A picture or documentary of female truck or crane drivers, would eventually cause the same shift. It's not necessary to modify the language. You can modify or strengthen a certain meaning of words.
@@Arcsinner Bei allem was mit "Gender Studies" zu tun hat, ist höchste Vorsicht geboten, ob da nicht die Vorerwartung der Forschenden die Methodik beeinflusst. ZB die Vorerwartung, dass Mädchen und Jungen nur deshalb verschiedene Berufe wählen, weil die Sprache ihnen geheime Botschaften einflüstere ...
As always, a good and thoughtful contribution. I am all for a gender-neutral language, but the development with the forced *innen-addition for all plural-nouns that describe a group of people makes the language horribly awkward and, instead of solving the problem, it much rather seems to compound it. In English, I understand, there is the opposite tendency, i.e. to avoid special female forms in the few cases where they exist, like "actress" or (probably more outdated) "authoress". These forms single women out as something separate from "normal" actors and authors, and therefore are regarded as rather sexist. I wish, German feminism would also see it that way, at least in the plural-forms. (To a certain degree I can see the sense of the male-female-distinction in the singular, and usually it is less awkard and problematic.)
As a NB person with a degree in linguistics, I'n LMAOing. In a good way. And at least in German there are attempts to accommodate my kind, unlike my native language, Russian, which is also heavily gendered.
@@dexter2392 вот из-за таких как ты в Рашке жить и невозможно. Х@й я к вам перееду, хоть меня и неоднократно пытались схэдхантить. Я их таможенного союза, но не из вашей помойки
"The" FTW. As an English person learning German, I've never really understood why everything has to be gendered. It just leads to a lack of confidence in speaking when you're unsure of the gender.
In German, the term is „(Nominatives) Genus“ … if you talked about „grammatisches Geschlecht“ people would wonder why you thought nouns had penises and vaginas. 😆 Linguistically, they're more properly called "Noun Classes." The Niger-Congo languages have anywhere from 10 to 26 of them. Besides, the only reason we call the damn things "genders"is because of a mistranslation of "genus" from Latin into, "gender," instead of, "category." You could just add readily name the 3 Noun Classes after other prominent members: Canine (der Hund), Feline (die Katze), Equine (das Pferd) Lunar (der Mond), Solar (die Sonne), Cosmic (das Weltall) Spoon (der Löffel), Fork (die Gabel), Knife (das Messer) …I could go on. 😉 After all, using any of those labels makes about as much sense as implying that nouns have genitals. 😆 Then there's „er“ „sie“ and „es“ - which really translate like this: „er“ == "he" _or_ "it" „sie“ == "she" _or_ "it" „es“ == "he" _or_ "she" _or_ "it" Once I was fluent, that's how I started thinking of them. In fact, once I was fluent, I stopped thinking of the 3 German noun classes as sex and started thinking of them in terms of word endings.
Why can't we just eliminate all gender in language and simplify things. We Germans like to verschlimmbessern our language and make it more complicated to speak. Writing Bürger*innen isn't a problem, but try to say it. Try to include everyone in speach is difficult. And the suggested glutton stop like in Danish sounds awful. Like you swallows a particular large fly mid word. Why not go the other way and try to find a common ground and simplify it like the Swedish language? Instead of er, sie, es just keep es for objects and animals and sit for all people. Get rid off der, die das and replace it with e.g. dit. And find a simple ending for nouns to point out singular and plural.
„Es“ isn’t even necessarily used for animals in German, like it is the case for English. German uses er/sie for animals as well, regardless of the animal being male or female („der Hase aß das Gras“ translates into „the (male or female) rabbit ate the grass“).
Because there is no "simply" and "just do that". People don't care what a tiny, tiny minority tells them to be "proper" language. You will note that dialects still exist, and people still use "ß". People as a whole will always go on speaking as they always have. And changing something as central as genders and personal pronouns in German? Forget it.
just for reference - transgender and nonbinary are absolutely not the same thing! transgender (most people don't use transsexual anymore) ppl are not necessarily non-binary, a lot of them are absolutely one of the two binary genders :)
But they can be the same thing, since non-binary people might also identify as transgender. Honestly though, I'm just happy he's talking about us at all, even if he's not 100% right on the terminology. It gives us some visibility and it's one youtuber less where I have to worry about them eventually making a video showing their transphobia.
@@ichbinben. 100% agree with you. It's good to know that some people are supportive even without extensive knowledge about it. it's just sad that the bar is so incredibly low. I mean just reading the comments on here like "this doesn't affect me because I don't think the masculine version being the norm is bad" just makes me incredibly sad. I just want to be a person, not an :in not a * not a divers (which i could go on a whole fucking rant about thats how much I hate it)
@@ichbinben. yeah, true, thats why i said "most" and "some", and not all! and i totally agree, at least talking about the problem of the german language being unnecessarily gendered is already so much better than nothing 😊
"Krankenschwester" ist ein feststehender Begriff, er kommt daher, dass früher Nonnen ("Schwestern") für die Pflege von Kranken zuständig waren. Genauso, wie heute kein Mensch auf die Idee kommt, dass eine Krankenschwester ein Nonne ist, wird hoffentlich heute kein Mensch auf die Idee kommen, dass eine Krankenschwester weiblich sein muss.
When I was trying to learn German properly at a Volkshochschule there were times my poor brain was blown by the gendering of words. Der Bikini for instance. As far as I can remember this was explained as a bikini is a schwimmanzug and the Anzug bit is the reason it is der.
You shouldn´t try to find a sense into the Grammatical Genders in German. It makes Learning German only more difficult as necessary. Some have a rule, some are only the traditional way of speaking it. And every rule has a huge number of exceptions. Just learn to every German Noun its Gender. And don´t try to think when doing it.
@@NicolaW72 you make it sound so easy 😉. Sadly the inquisitive part of my brain is just built that way, it always wants to know ‘why!?’ It’s why I gave up with Rosetta Stone, even though I paid for it, and why now Duolingo only manages to sort of maintain what I learned while actually living in Germany. Immersion was working, taking my grandson to a kindergarten where they supportively but firmly refused to speak English was teaching me more German than books or apps ever did. I miss it so much, but sadly a return now is all but impossible, so I continue to try because to give up would mean a certain part of the British public will have had an even bigger victory over me, and I won’t allow that to happen.
@@randomjasmicisrandom I can imagine that. Speaking with native speakers is always the best way to learn a language - it works then in an intuitive way, not by cramming vocabulary and grammatical rules.
Genders of new and loan words mostly need to make intuitive sense to native German speakers. Sometimes southern and northern Germans disagree on the 'correct' article to use.
Whenever I see someone's preferred pronouns in their bio or email signature in English I keep wondering what the German equivalent would be. Yes, we have he/him and she/her but the ever so elegant they/them somehow doesn't really have a German translation. At least we use "Sie identifizieren sich als nicht-binär" in a completely different way (either as a literal third person plural "sie" or capitalized as a formal address "Sie"). The third person singular non-identified gender, sadly, we are lacking. I, personally, wouldn't have a problem with just using the neuter "es" but it always feels wrong to use it for other people because it can be viewed as an offense (i.e. calling someone an object). As for job descriptions, it seems we'll be stuck with the "(w/m/d)" suffix and it will be even more difficult to replace something like "liebe Bürgerinnen und Bürger" because not everything can be as elegantly - for lack of a better word - "neutered" as "Studierende" and "liebes Volk" still has a weird ring to it in German ears. Language is complicated. I wish there was a qualified comittee who set the rules for a language in the most logical way and we'd just follow those rules. But, sadly, linguistics are only a descriptive discipline and therefore can only react to how people are butchering their language... 🙈
Are you a native English speaker? Because in German, „er“ „sie“ and „es“ don't really translate to "he" "she" and "it". It's more like: „er“ == "he" or "it" „sie“ == "she" or "it" „es“ == "he" or "she" or "it" That's how I eventually came to think of them one I became fluent in German. And it's how I explain them to others.
@@John_Weiss No, my native language is German. I know that in German the grammatical gender doesn't necessarily translate to the English use of gender but regarding personal pronouns they are pretty equivalent. And I guarantee you that most people won't like it if you call them "es" even if they don't identify as either male or female. In general it's probably good to imagine "er", "sie", and "es" in the way you describe but it goes more for the grammatical gender of nouns than for using them literally as the pronouns. Of course the correct form would be, "Das Mädchen heißt Lisa. Es ist vier Jahre alt.", because in this case the "es" refers to the noun "Mädchen" and not necessarily to Lisa herself. You would still use "sie" when referring to the girl when you don't use the word "Mädchen", for example: "Das ist Lisa. Sie ist vier Jahre alt." And generally people have not been very consistent because German doesn't even make sense to Germans sometimes so it has become acceptable to say, "Das Mädchen heißt Lisa. Sie ist vier Jahre alt.", because you are still referring to Lisa. And again, in regards to personal pronouns it usually is tied to the biological/identified gender just like using an article with a name. You can say "die Lisa" or "der Thomas", but even if Alex identifies as non-binary they might not like being called "das Alex". Some might. Like within my friend group it is completely acceptable to use "es" for a non identified gender of a person. If someone wants to bring their partner to game night we actually would say, "Klar, bring es mit." but this is not the generally accepted way to say that (because there basically is no generally accepted way to say that beyond "sie oder ihn" which doesn't include everyone). Hence my problem.. 😅
@@witerabid Oh! I see! Yes, I was focusing more on the Genus of the noun than on the gender of the person that the pronoun is referring to. Everything you said makes perfect sense. I will admit to being surprised, however, that the pronoun, „es“ is associated solely with objects, what with „Mädchen“ und „Fräulein“, I'dve thought that the cognitive ties would be a little less rigid. Unlike English, where calling a person, “it”, has _always_ been dehumanizing and therefore insulting. Ich hoffe, daß ich Sie nicht beleidigt habe, weil ich nicht von Ihrem Kommentar gechecked habe, daß Deutsch Ihre Muttersprache ist.
@@John_Weiss I'll take that as a compliment. It must mean that my English is good enough to be mistaken for a native speaker's English. 😉 Yes, German is pretty complicated in that regard. It always depends on whether the pronoun is actually tied to a noun (like "Mädchen") - then using "es" is completely fine - or if the noun you're referring to is a name, because that implies you do know the person's gender. Let's put it this way: "der Hund" is always an "er", unless you know whether it's actually a good boy or a good girl - "die Katze" will always be a "sie", unless you actually know its sex. But in either case you can always use the correct personal pronoun even though the noun is a different grammatical gender (because German wasn't complicated enough). "Das Mädchen geht heute zum ersten Mal in die Schule. Sie freut sich schon sehr." is perfectly acceptable to German ears and the arguably more correct version with "es" will make people look at you weirdly for a split second until they (hopefully) realize that they had originally learned it like that in school. But since the word "Mädchen" already implies that they are female most Germans will just use the sex as the grammatical gender in any other context. You can even use this construct to imply the biological sex of, let's say, a pet: "Mein Hund hat mich heute Nacht ständig geweckt. Sie hat alle 5 Minuten an meiner Tür gekratzt." Instead of using the female "die Hündin" - which exists too - most people will still use the unspecific "der Hund" even though they do know the dog's sex and afterwards use the female "personal" pronouns. If you learn German as a second language and you learned the strict grammar rules this will sound wrong to you. But this is actually widely accepted and used and everyone will just view it as the second sentence simply giving the added information that the dog - unspecified in the first sentence - is actually female. I hope this wasn't too confusing. 🙈 Learning a new language is already tough enough. But the actual use of a language being different from the rules you'll learn makes it orders of magnitude more difficult. Now you don't only have to learn the rules, you also have to learn the exceptions to the rules, learn new rules for those exceptions, AND learn when to follow which rule... I apologize to anyone trying to learn my language... 😅
In a lot of cases you can work around using gendered forms though. Some teachers are upset and frustrated cause they don't know how to write "hello dear colleagues". Just say "hello" then, like, there's no need to extend that. The only reason you feel the need to say more is "politeness" traditions codified by some guy named Knigge more than a hundred years ago, ditch it already.
I have to imagine it must be confusing dealing with people of alternative gender is or any type of transgender person. But you did this video incredibly well and you are awesome!
Well... instead of "der Leher" or "die Lehrerin", they tend to just say "Lehrende" or in the case of the salesperson "Verkaufende" as a gender-neutral way.
Still a problem, der Lehrer is masculin like der Lehrende, same as der Verkäufer and der Verkaufende. The article is still der->maskulin. Lehrer=teacher, Lehrender=teaching person. Verkäufer= Salesman, der Verkaufende= the selling person. You see the nonsense in this discussion?
@@LarsEllerhorst no, not "Der Lehrende" (the man who teaches), "Die Lehrende" (the woman who teaches) or even "Das Lehrende" (the thing that is teaching, for example you learn something from a situation, a story or a mistake). But no, none of the above, but just "Lehrende" without anything, what kinda means "those who teach" and therefor is gender-neutral. Same with Verkaufende, just without any article at all it means "those who sell" and like Lehrende is not tied to a specific gender.
Recently some radio stations - e.g. MDR or even Deutschlandfunk - started to use this massively annoying "Bürger...Innen". It is just messing up with language for no other reason than trying to make it right for a minority of people who is ready for feeling offended by everything. Next thing to come: Trigger warnings before reading the news...
And what exactly would be/is wrong with havin trigger warnings heading news? I do suspect you do not know what trigger warnings are and which purpose they serve.
Wenn man sich mit der Entstehung des grammatischen Geschlechts auseinandersetzt, weiß man einfach, dass alles Geschrei um angebliche Diskriminierung falsch ist, da es immer nur auf Missverständnissen, Fehlschlüssen oder anderen Unwahrheiten beruht. Die Behauptung, das biologisch Männliche sei in der Sprache der Default, ist falsch. Die Kategorie Maskulinum heißt bloß Maskulinum, weil man auf dem ersten Blick meinte, hier eine Verbindung zum Sexus zu sehen. Daher bin ich dafür, statt von Maskulinum, Femininum und Neutrum, ab jetzt von Genus 1, Genus 2 und Genus 3 zu sprechen. Genus 1 ist der Default, weil es die Eigenschaft dieses Genus ist, Defaultableitungen darzustellen. Genus 2 ist ein spezifisches Genus, da es sich hier auf der Wortbildungsebene (ungleich der semantischen Ebene!) um Abstraktionen und Kollektivierungen handelt. Genus 3 ist das spezifische Genus für Resultatableitungen. (Alles stark vereinfacht.) Das ist auch der Grund, warum es „der Computertomograph“ (die agierende Sache), „die Computertomographie“ (die Abstraktion) und „das Computertomogramm“ (das Resultat) heißt. Anderes Beispiel: Die Grabung (Abstraktion), das Grab (das Resultat) und, wenn das Graben morgen neuer Volkssport würde, „*der Grab“ (analog zu „der Tritt, Schlag, Fick...) („Ey, lass mal morgen auf einen Grab auf dem Acker treffen“). „Lehrerin“ ist biologisch weiblich, Lehrer ist biologisch geschlechtsneutral. Lehrkraft hört sich für mich abwertend und menschenverachtend an (der Lehrer wird auf seine Lehr-Kraft reduziert; dann können wir auch gleich wieder von Menschenmaterial sprechen), wie NS-Sprache. Ein Supraleiter ist auch maskulin und von der Wortbildung her gleich wie ein Lehrer. „Bürgerinnen und Bürger“ ist mehrfach falsch. 1. weil es die oben genannte Logik des Genussystems verletzt, 2. weil es gegen das Gesetz der wachsenden Glieder verstößt (es muss „Bürger und Bürgerinnen“ heißen, das kürzere Glied zuerst!) und 3. weil es der Ikonizität widerspricht: das Bedeutungsärmere muss vor dem Bedeutungsreicheren stehen. „Bürger“ enthält keine biologische Geschlechtsinformation, „Bürgerin“ eben schon. Früher wurden Formulierungen wie „Bürger und Bürgerinnen“ aus gutem Grunde benutzt, weil man klar machen wollte, dass Frauen auch addressiert sind, weil sie es vorher noch nicht gewesen waren; etwa nach der Einführung des Frauenwahlrechtes konnte ein Redner „Bürger und Bürgerinnen“ sagen, weil er damit betonen wollte, dass Bürgerinnen auch Bürger und auch addressiert sind. Hier hatte die Phrase „Bürger und Bürgerinnen“ somit die Bedeutung „Bürger, auch Bürgerinnen“. Heute sollte man also wieder von „Bürgern“ sprechen. Die Angelsachsen haben es genau andersherum gemacht und vollkommen richtig: die kürzere Variante wählen. Keine actress, keine waitress, keine ministress, sondern nur die vermeintlich männlichen Bezeichnungen. Aufs Deutsche bezogen: nur noch das generische Genus 1. Dies ist kein Aufbäumen gegen Sprachwandel. Der ist mir sogar recht egal. Ich wehre mich gegen ideologische und emotionalisierte Instrumentalisierung von Sprache und Grammatik für irgendeine politische Agenda. Und ehrlich gesagt ist mir das Anliegen der Sprachgenderer völlig zweitrangig. Mir ist es egal, ob sie hehre Ziele haben oder nicht. Sie lügen und damit sind sie falsch. Soll doch die Welt verbrennen, doch verbrenne sie in den Flammen der Wahrheit. Besser als mit dem Saft der Lüge genährt zu wachsen.
The thing is, I think german words shouldn't be gendered at all. You should just, take the "masculine" and un-masculine the words that refer to people in general if you know what i mean...
Just a simple nerdy comment: In Germanic languages (Not looking at you English you bizarre abomination that defies all that is good and right in this world by not being compatible with my argument) the male noun is the default and as far as I remember from reading a few articles and some Wikipedia entries there was no proper Neutrum in the old Germanic languages or Proto-Germanic languages in which there was a male version, the default, and a sort of Neutrum which was more or less also the female version. So in my mind (as a German who speaks German, neither Nederlands or the language complex of Denmark, Norway and Sweden) the correct (and yes in Germany we have a correct form of language which is called Hochdeutsch, which is used in official matters and is often preferred outside of family occasions, since everybody understands it and because it makes sense) way to use a Neutral noun would be to use the male noun since it is the default. I don't know how well this would work for other languages in the Germanic family, but it works perfectly well in German. The only problem I see is that of course every feminist on the planet would like to skin me alive for this statement and yes I agree that it is somewhat of a hot take, but I think that in Germany this would simply take some statements and a bit of adjusting and we would suddenly find ourselves with one less problem you would only have to take the step to not associate the Job title (in Germany we have many protected terms that define a field of work, a job, only if you have learned this occupation through official means are you allowed to advertise yourself as it) with the Person. In many ways we are already doing that, for example when describing a character in a novel who's gender should not be revealed one usually uses the male noun and when the only thing mentioned about a side character is its profession you also use the male noun. The breaking point here really is feminism, and I am not saying that feminism is bad as a movement or that activists are cultural terrorists who seek to destroy the German spirit, all I want to say is that George Orwell i still correct in the assumption that the way we talk, the language we use and the specific words given to ideas and things are crucial factors, if not necessarily the most crucial ones that define the different ways we think. Here I would like to make the argument that it would be better to just go with the most simple solution, that is informed by the study of the language instead of an agenda that tries to forcefully change the way we speak. The difference between: "Sie ist ein Lehrer" und " Sie ist eine Lehrerin" is only important when you have no pronoun in which case it would be "Die Person ist ein Lehrer", "Der Mensch ist ein Lehrer", "Ein Lehrer der Freien Waldorfschule Würzburg bekommt es nicht auf die Kette, seinen Hosenstall nach einem gemütlichen Toilettengang, von so circa 20 Minuten, vor dem Betreten des Klassenzimmers zu schließen", well yes, it would not be a perfect solution, but having every ten years a Humie telling you that you are sexist, because you put a / between Lehrer/in instead of a *, which, if I may be allowed to add a piece of simple primary school level education, is really annoying because this symbol has already a function and it is not to show that two terms are interchangeable or that two forms of a term are interchangeable, no, it is to mark the exact position of a footnote or other addition to a sentence or text. Damn plebs they have no right to ruin MY language, only I and a select group of cronies should be allowed to dictate how MY language should be spoken... Oh no I am starting to sound like the bloody Fränsch Äkädämä de Vron zu Arse or what ever they call it these days. You got mw do what ever you want id rather not understand my neighbour and go through two hundred pages of legalese to write every sentence that may or may not be seen by another human being, than speak vRanch. If anything I said is factually wrong please correct me, but before you do, could you please take another second to just look it up on Wikipedia. Maybe you could even find it in your heart to link a link so that one might even think on reading up on it to learn a bit more and have a bit of context so that one might find it easier to fit that knowledge into one's existing frame of reference. Many thanks and the time you wasted on it will surely be repaid as (an?) extra piece of credit on your next job application. And if you have read all of this bullshit please seek professional help.
1:47 that's a grat way to avoid using a specific gender
fireman/firewoman = firefighter
mailman/mailwoman = mailfighter
garbageman/garbagewoman = garbagefighter
...
That is good for English (especially the firefighter one), though a solution for German is still needed. I would suppose the German version is the name of the workplace, followed by _Mitglied_ (member). Correct me if I'm wrong (I don't speak to much German), but from what I can tell by looking stuff up, _Mitglied_ is a neuter noun, so I think I could get away with saying something like _Feuerwehr-Mitglied_ (fire department member) or _Mail-Dienst-Mitglied_ (mail service member).
@@Hand-in-Shot_Productions people mit Glied are generally male.
Okay this was a bad pun, your "Mitglied" solution would probably work in at least a lot of cases but the term "Mitglied" implies more like a voluntary participation than being an employee.
@@NonSurvivorOne I see: so volunteer firefighters are _Mitglied,_ but not people who work in the post industry, since they tend to be paid employees. I would have use "employee" were it not for that word being divided into two genders in German: masculine _Mitarbeiter_ and feminine _Mitarbeiterin._
Feuerwehrleute, Postbedienstete. Müllabführende? The last one is not real ;)
@@Hand-in-Shot_Productions to use "Mitglied" or sth familiar is one way in the good direction, but still male in German.
I found another good way: to emphasize the action not the person/being. Instead of using "Die Studenten" they use: "Die Studierenden" [the ones, who study].
I like this.
Oder die Tagesschau in ihrer unglaublichen eleganten Klugheit schrieb: "Urlaubende kehren aus Spanien zurück".
Wären dann natürlich eigentlich Rückkehrende.
Ich kann diese Wortverdreherei überhaupt nicht nachvollziehen. Mal ganz ehrlich, wer denkt den beim Wort "Urlauber" an nur männliche Personen?
Oder sie meinten Urlaub[hiccup]Ende - das Ende des Urlaubs 🤣
Heißt es dann a) Einwohnende b) Bewohnende c) Eingewohnte statt Einwohner Deutschlands?
Und es heißt dann immer noch "der" Urlaubende, oder? Was hat man damit dann erreicht, außer die Sprache zu verhunzen?
@@berulan8463 Plural, "die Urlaubenden", waren hier gemeint. Plural ist im Deutschen generell nicht genusmarkiert. Das ist wahrscheinlich der Grund, warum es so benutzt wird (auch wenn ich das nicht schön finde). Im Singular kann man es sich ebensogut sparen, aus ungefähr dem von dir genannten Grund. Es heißt dann zwar nicht zwingend "der", sondern kann ebensogut "die" heißen, aber man muss sich immer noch festlegen - was man ja vermeiden wollte. (Ich habe auch selten gesehen, dass es im Singular benutzt wird.)
unsere Sprache ist wirklich schön, aber sehr komplex, und wir machen sie immer komplexer
.. und kaputter.
Komplexer ist nicht immer besser
Und für einen deutschlerner es ist noch schlimmer
Deutsch ist nicht die einzige Sprache, die immer komplexerer wird, einige romanische und asiatische Sprachen.
Eher schwachsinniger. Das klingt wie ein Schlaganfall.
ich hab neulich im Baumarkt "Wandfarbe Innen" gesehen. Das geht mir mittlerweile echt zu weit mit dem gendern
Ja das Hühner-Innen-Filet im Supermarkt hat mich auch schon getriggered. ;-)
@@teacup3000 🤣👍
Da hätte wohl jemand ganz schnell zurück in den Deutschkurs müssen XD
Wobei, ich schlag Leute, die von "Salzstreuerinnen" reden.
*Han Solo voice* "That's not how the German Language works?!"
zu geil!
@@DarthLenaPlant its a joke
I am a female. I am very lazy, therefore I opt for using the grammatical masculine form as the normal form for all of the social genders when you talk about a group of people. If you are talking about one single person, you can easily use the one of the grammatical genders available that fits best. But for the plural? Why so complicated? We are used to the difference between grammar and social gender. We know that if you are talking about "Die Katzen", you could refer to male and female cats. So why should we care if you say "die Köche"? We know that there could be women in that group just as we know it with other words.
I am female too and I see it the same way. Why overcomplicate things?
Some people will answer, you have to use "Kater und Kätzinnen" rather than "Katzen".
many decades ago in school, we learned that for unspecified groups, mixed groups, and similar, the male version is used as default, and we were well aware of that.
we also learned that there were some professions which already had a third version for the plural, eg _Kaufmann/Kauffrau/Kaufleute,_ _Feuerwehrmann/-frau/-leute,_ etc.
then someone had the glorious idea that everything should be gender neutral and explicitly include all versions (which is a contradiction!?) and they started to always use an enumeration, like _Kaufmänner und Kauffrauen,_ even when there was a perfect word _Kaufleute_ already, and when that group had no males or no females in it (which then sounds ridiculous), no longer ever using _Kaufleute,_ and many people even forgot that there are already several alternatives (at least for some professions) which resulted in someone holding a speach and starting _"Liebe Feuerwehrmänner und _*_Feuerwehrmänninnen_*_ ..."_
and the more people use these new (presumable better) versions, the more they forget what we have learned and only think of all those that are included in explicit lengthy enumerations, but forget about our learned rule "default is male version", and thus no longer think that some _Verkäufer_ might be male OR female when not explicitly mentioned.
thus (imho) all of this even lessens the general inclusion of everybody. i admit that quite often some professions were only seen as purely male or purely female, and some people didn't think of mixed groups when hearing the plural. but (again imho) it would have been much better to invest all this effort into increasing the awareness for these cases, instead of putting the burden on speakers who now have to glottal stop speaking about them.
there are more alternatives too, but they all have one thing in common: they sound clumsy and completely artificial, reminding me of "1984 good speak", like what they did in some laws, eg _"zu Fuß Gehende"_ instead of _Fußgänger;_ and then you could have the same argument that _"Gehende"_ (they probably were thinking of _"gehende Person",_ with _die Person_ being gramatically female) sounds like only the female version and doesn't include males. *_I_* am either a _Fußgänger,_ or a _"zu Fuß Gehender", but not a _"zu Fuß gehende"_
btw: "Arzt" is a job description. will that now also be changed, and all male, female and divers doctors will officially have the profession of "AÄrzt|In(m/w/d)" in the future ?
everything that is done excessively starts becoming ridiculous sometime ...
I just skip the gender inflection. I call anyone a "Leser" (or any other role) despite seeing their gender.
If they rebel because of skipping their gender I call them "weiblicher Leser". (what they sometimes find weird, I don't know (grammatically) why ... 🤔)
We already use this for excluding explicitely females with "an meine männlichen Leser".
Funny thing is they always understand and cannot hide this fact but lie that they don't. 🤷♀
@@Anson_AKBErinnerst Du Dich an den Vogel, der eine Frau als "Krankenschwesterin" vorgestellt hat? Ich weiß nicht mehr, welche Sendung es war, hat aber lange für Unterhaltung gesorgt. 🤦😂
What i don't get is why it's always portrayed as negative that the male variant is often the default. You could easily phrase it as "the male isn't special enough to get a dedicated word".
yeah, that's one way to see it, but i think for many people it feels more like the male version is the default, "the gold standard", and the female version just an addition.
Also many people want to include all genders more explicitly in their use of language and that's nice. Nobody is forced to do it. The people that get angry about gender-inclusive language the most are right-wingers because they use this as a proxy debate about the human rights of trans people.
@@gingeridot True but the proxy debaters shouldn't influence the actual debate.
Lass uns doch den Assiplural nehmen!? Liebe Bürgers
Ich mags irgendwie. :)
s-Plural durchsetzen bitte
Warum dann nicht gleich alles mit -dingens(e) (sg. das, pl. die) bilden?
Problem gelöst.
@@Leofwine Plural „die“ sieht aber aus wie weiblich „die“, das wäre ja dann auch wieder sexistisch.
Also dann das Singular, und dass Plural (mit einem Asi-s).
@@TheZett Ach, statt "die" oder "der" geht doch immer "de". Geht auch in die Assi-Richtung.
Asi ist wenn man "Alter" "Digga" und sogar "Freundchen" genannt wird. Aber ich kann verstehen dass manche sich etwas besseres finden, wenn jemand so redet. Ist schon gut, lass dich umarmen. Die bösen jugendlichen sind schon weg
I guess English speakers are just more chill with accepting words like "teacher" as the generic full stop rather than the generic masculine. Because the archaic feminine "teacheress" isn't used anymore, "teacher" doesn't imply gender... while "waiter" could, at least if put next to "waitress".
American English uses gender-neutral 'server' for waiter/waitress, at least from what I've picked up.
Yeah, unless the base word happens to "feel" gendered (like fireman and so on) we're much more likely to do away with the suffixed feminine forms, which I think makes sense. Without grammatical gender that invokes natural gender, the only thing making a word like actor "masculine" is the existence of an explicitly feminine word like actress, which has held on longer than teachress but is definitely on the outs these days.
@@nikobellic570 well all nouns withe the "er" ending or the latin "or" ending are originally masculine and describe someone as a maker/ actor. servant would be gender neutral, as - ans/- antis is the latin -ing form, which was in latin the same for all three gender. Therefore it is for example complete nonsense to replace Student by "Studierende" in German, as both forms are present participles of two different lamguages that are originally both gender neutral...
It would be extremely easy to just accept that the grammatical genus of a German word exists completely independently from the biological sex and the social gender. Then we could just talk normally again and it would actually include absolutely everyone, including non-binary. And I disagree that it implies that being male is the norm, because, as you correctly said, many nouns are also female and neuter. Most are male, okay, but that has nothing to do with the gender of the people. We could also just rename the grammatical genus. Let's call it category A, B and C instead of male, female and neuter. Problem solved. Most nouns are category A. That has no implication of biology or social gender identity.
That would be a nice and simple solution in theory, but in praxis it doesn't seem to work. Psychological studies have shown that the male (grammatical) form, even if it is intended as gender neutral, will still be perceived to imply masculinity. Unfortunetely humans are not 100% rational creatures. Check the comments by Archsinner for examples of the possible problems including a source.
@@arnonuehm1
Problem is: Nobody sees a "Fachkraft" as 100% female, although "die Fachkraft" is feminin.
@@HalfEye79 "Fachkraft" is, like "Person", an abstract expression. Nothing that provokes an image in your mind. So that's not what we are actually talking about here. It's more of a hyperonym, and the said problem doesn't usually occur in those.
@@AndersGehtsdochauch
It a generic femininum.
@arnonuehm1: Yes, it does work. Those studies counted e. g. numbers of male/female famous athletes that were asked about using vs. ignoring the female grammatical forms in the questions. They completely ignored the effects of the percieved expectations by the inquirer by adding the female (grammatical) form, that are met by those who answered (so-called "social desirability" effect). A good example for bad science - and you do find a lot of those in psychology. I am saying this having a degree in this discipline...
Thanks for explaining "das Mädchen" correctly! I've seen so many German learners be confused about this. It's one of my favorite examples of the ever changing nature of languages: It used to be just the diminutive of "die Magd" when Magd still meant girl. But when Magd descended into meaning "maidservant", Mädchen took its place for girl.
I always thought it was the diminutive of Mädel. Interesting!
@@melissaswan5073 Mädel is an alternative diminutive. While in standard German the diminutive is formed with -chen or -lein, in Southern German -el, -le or -li are used. In Swabian, Mädchen is thus Madle, in Bavarian Mädel/Mad(e)l and in Swiss German Maitli.
@@melissaswan5073 or from die Maid.
It is the deminutive of Maid. and just like in German, the same Diminutive exists in English: maiden. It is the same word, the same diminutive, just spelt slightly differently and without the ch of course..
@@melissaswan5073 Mädel, Mädlein are both diminutives by their own.
Norwegian also have three grammatical genders, but we rarely have a 'female' version of professions, and those that exist are mostly seen as a bit antiquated nowadays. Even nurses (sykepleier, in German: Krankenpfleger) are gramatically masculine.
which is the way german should go towards. if you normalize this people will simply stop thinking about th fact that it's male and simply see it as the only version of the word
@@kevboard "stop thinking about the FACT that it's male" there is no such fact. If it were like you said that would mean that you would "create" a new form by eliminating the feminine -in stem. But what you are actually doing is give the generic form room to thrive, you don't invent it.
Personally I'd wish for us to just mentally separate grammatical genders from biological genders and use the shortest form available in our language. All these extra constructs to avoid making oneself open to attack by easily offended people just serve to make German sentences longer than they already are.
Yeah absolutely, I mean from a linguistic prospective (if we ignore social stuff) they're just categories - they could as easily be A, B, C rather than gendered language.
Though we as a society first have to advance to a point where the mere idea of being excluded is inconceivably far-fetched.
Factually this is already the case, genus ≠ sexus, but somehow some people disagree with that and try to change things for the sake of changing things, despite this being unnecessary and redundant.
@@Wheeljack2k Yes and that's exactly the problem. You cannot "plant" things like that in people's minds. Things like that have to sink in slowly and repeatedly. First step is to raise consciousness. How to achieve that? By being more aware and using language in a proper way. If we continue using it the same way as we always did, nothing will ever change.
Indeed! Linguists use the term "Noun Classes" which is not only a better description but less confusing. The Niger-Congo languages have anywhere from 10 to 26 noun classes - calling them "grammatical genders" is pointless and absurd.
I don't think a gender-neutral language will change the problems with gender equality. As the not use of the N word hasn't solved racism. I think that this discussion about gender-neutral language has annoyed a lot of people so a open discussion about problems like no binary gender has become impossible.
Our problem aren't the words. If intended even the most beautiful word can become vicious. Lets stop to fiddle around with our language and start to solve the real problems.
I completely agree, replacing the term negroes with "colored people" or "people with a migration background" is just replacing a discriminatory term with another one.
I agree that gender neutral language does not just automatically solve gender inequality but I think you are underestimating the importance. Firstly, language is a primary way that we affirm people's gender identities, so if there is no language to refer to people who are nonbinary, then you have no choice but to misgender them which leads to people having genuine dysphoria. Additionally, you should consider what we know about linguistic relativity, which is the concept that a person's language heavily influences the ways in which they think about stuff. The English language used to address hypothetical people almost always as "he" unless the hypothetical person is doing something feminine. Our recent shift towards the word "They" instead genuinely has influence over how we come to expect different roles from people on the basis of gender. Additionally, saying that this discussion "annoys people" is bullshit because those people aren't annoyed by the language, they're "annoyed" by trans and nonbinary people. Getting rid of the language conversation doesn't do anything about that but allow them to continue to misgender people.
@@professionalamateurs8130 If you'd watched the video carefully you would now that in the German language affirmation of people's gender identities is not really working. And we are have a neuter to address no binary persons. And if language would "heavily influences the ways in which they think about stuff" Germany must be a much more patriarchic society then englisch specking countries because in Germany nearly every job designations is male.
I'm not saying there is zero effect. But I think you are overestimating the effect. Eg for me as German the word Lehrer (male and base form of teacher) do not insist that a teacher is a man because my experiences teached me otherwise. So inside my head a teacher is not male even it is a male word in German. Lehrer is just a definition like green.
And if I'm saying people get annoyed I'm not talking about some intolerant idiots. I'm talking partially about some very liberal people how would literally fight for everybody's right of to be whatever he she it like.
Language is a very personal thing, for a lot of people it is even part of there identity, there origin. And saying "this is bullshit and there just annoyed by trans and nonbinary people" is exactly what had poisoned the discussion and now even people who otherwise would consider to change there language are pissed.
Well done Sir (m,w,d)
yes, it didn't solve racism, but wouldn't you agree there is a difference between saying "a Black man" and saying the n-word? And i totally agree that you can make even innocuous words into insults if you use them right. That doesn't mean that slurs are suddenly fine. I have no idea how much gendered language actually shapes the thoughts of the people speaking it, but i can't blame anyone for trying to find new ways to express different genders. Sometimes i would like to know what the German language in a couple of decades would be like
I am a Portuguese native speaker from Brazil. In our country we are also facing this problem because Portuguese is a very gender-based language. Some people from non-binary community are trying to change the natural language to a gender-neutral language. But as we can see in German, in Portuguese the words become slightly unintelligible to the majority of people. Also we have pronunciation problems..
Same thing with Spanish. Our language, like yours, has masculine and female nouns and verbs and articles conjugated with each. It would be a new language all together. It just sounds weird.
@daniiel mlinarics some languages are more gender neutral than others. If I compare Portuguese and English, English is much more gender neutral than Portuguese. That's because in portuguese basically every word that ends with the letter "a" is feminine and words ending with "o" refers to masculine. Of course there's some few exceptions. In order to get a gender neutral word, speakes change this last letter to "e" or sometimes to "x". But in most cases, the word becomes unintelligible and/or sounds very weird to hear or speak. Based in what you said, I think your language is more gender based than Portuguese. We have some very common words that are naturally neutral like "eu" (I, myself) and "você" (you) which doesn't allow you to define a gender. But as you said there are languages where because it's structure, you have to define gender when you want to say "I, me, myself" or "you, yours" and that's a problem in this context.
There is actually a way, although not very common, to de-gender the German language: The Austrian artist Hermes Phettberg started to use the ending "-ys" for every plural noun where the generic masculinum would pose a problem. So for example "die Lehrer" would be "die Lehrys" or "die Verkäufer" would be "die Verkäufys". A German language didactician proposed in 2019 to use this method instead of the ones mentioned in the video. Let's see, if it catches on eventually... (I doubt it, it would be fun tho)
As a German I have never even heard of this so I doubt it is really catching on very well.
@@Taladar2003 As a German I can tell you that it exists tho and yes, it isn't really catching on ^^
I think of it more as a fun alternative than a serious thing
I hate the idea but it's better than trying to be inclusive with the ":in" crap
If anything it would be infinitely easier to introduce gender neutral elements to German language. Just find a neutral ending and you're good. In Polish language it's sadly more difficult. We often struggle with creating female equivalents for professions let alone gender neutral names
@@angelikaskoroszyn8495 Every word is gendered in German. Even words that are perceived as being neutral have a grammatical gender, usually male or female.
You think that German has a problem.
In some Slavic languages noun, adjective and verb can conjugate.
And if there is mix of genders in case, they always default to masculine (like in 'women(f) and children(n) sat in the room'):
Men sat in room - Muškarci su sedeLI u sobi.
Women sat in room - Žene su sedeLE u sobi.
Children sat in room - Deca su sedeLA u sobi.
Women and children sat in room - Žene i deca su sedeLI u sobi.
Some people try be politically correct and try to include all genders.
We have different state of mind - we know that no genders are discriminated for job position and keep speaking normally.
German has the generic masculine form as well, but this is more like the core of the problem than a solution. In the past, it was enough to mention only the grammatical male form and everybody knew it applied to people of all genders. But now, some women and transgender people feel discriminated because of that.
@@NonSurvivorOne Psychological experiments have shown that there's a bias towards men in people's perception when the masculine form is used. If that weren't the case, we wouldn't be talking about this all the time.
In German, adjectives also conjugate. And for many words, there are also male and female forms. And a mixed group of genders also default to masculine, and that's exactly what the language police has an issue with.
@@NonSurvivorOne Which is quite of funny, because a generic form for all is inclusive, while a set of separate forms is discriminating. These people claim to be against discrimination but do exactly that.
@@Nikioko I never understood how they claim fighting for equality when they at the same time deconstruct men being equally worthy as women but instead invent dozents of new genders. We wouldn't need equality if they hadn't divided society
Das mit dem Schluckauf ist mir noch nie aufgefallen LOL -- stimmt schon...
Relax, folks. In thirty years Germany will be predominantly islamic and this shit will come to a halt. What a relief!
Müssen die Bürger*innen halt alle einzeln und mit Namen angesprochen werden. Find ich fair.
Why is it acceptable to use Male + Female to refer to Non-binary people, when it is not acceptable to use a generic masculine or generic feminine? The BS about the Gendersternchen being all inclusive to me is an utterly stupid idea.
Moreover, the German obsession with male and female versions of job titles has another effect, it puts extreme emphasis on the fact that the person in question is male or female. To many this is an unwanted effect since it comes with the connotation that being of the non-stereotypical gender is special and especially noteworthy but might also for many bring with them the connotations that it is something to be wary of. English and Dutch - just to name two closely related to German examples - have taken the route of using the generic masculine or generic feminine jobtitles for anyone. In the Netherlands and thus in Dutch we like to compare this to the diminutive, ie. it matters not if the grammatical gender of a word coincides with the gender of the person doing the job. As such in Dutch one would say "mevrouw de rechter" and "meneer de rechter" when addressing a judge (Dutch hasn't got a polite word of address for non-binary people yet, just like English (ie, that's still only got Sir and Madam)). And it's gotten so bad in German that there are various woke people who now get angry when a person such as myself (I am a transwomen) uses the word "Jurist" instead of "Juristin" (in German) or "juriste" (in Dutch) to describe myself, and then go on to call me a "fake transgender" or worse.
Also, thanks for the video, but would you please use the term "Transgender people" instead of "transsexual people"? The difference is tiny, but of immense value for transgender people since the use of "transsexual" puts an extreme emphasis on the changing of genitals and seemingly stimulates the obsession of cisgender people with what us transgender people have in our pants. Trans people are just as valid in their identity if they haven't yet, or don't wish to undergo gender reassignment surgery.
Micro minorities do not count in my book when they try to be on top of everything
m/w/d bedeutet übrigens männlich/weiß/deutsch
Pfuuuuiiiiii😉
month/week/day
männlich, weiblich, dämlich.
@@imrehundertwasser7094 Danke. Nicht toll.
Ugh. This entire ideas of, "grammatical 'gender'," really pisses me off. The only reason we call the damn things "genders"is because of a mistranslation of "genus" from Latin into, "gender," instead of, "category."
And Linguistically, they _are_ called "Noun Classes." (The Niger-Congo languages have anywhere from 10 to 26 of them.)
In German, the term is „(Nominatives) Genus“ … if you talked about „grammatisches Geschlecht“ people would wonder why you thought nouns had penises and vaginas. 😆
You could just add readily name the 3 Noun Classes of German after other prominent members:
Canine (der Hund), Feline (die Katze), Equine (das Pferd)
Lunar (der Mond), Solar (die Sonne), Cosmic (das Weltall)
Spoon (der Löffel), Fork (die Gabel), Knife (das Messer)
…I could go on. 😉 After all, using any of those labels makes about as much sense as implying that nouns have genitals. 😆
Once I was fluent in German, I stopped thinking of the 3 German noun classes as sex and started thinking of them in terms of word endings.
Yeah. Even in linguistics, "grammatical gender" is simply a subset of noun class system which divides nouns into 2 or 3 classes, most commonly referred to as masculine-feminine-neuter. Other names for these classes do exist, like masculine-feminine-common, human-animate-inanimate, or even class 1-class 2-class 3 but for some reason we're stuck with masculine-feminine-neuter from that mistranslation. This three-class system is a very Indo-European thing, by the way. Other language families either have more classes (like the Niger-Congo languages like you said) or don't have them at all (like the Austronesian languages).
@@aarspar Indeed! I dod know everything that you said, so Thanks for Adding it! ^_^
[I will admit, however, to intentionally omitting what you said in your first 2 sentences. I have a strong aversion to calling the 2- and 3-class Indo-European noun class systems, "grammatical genders," because I feel that (1) It causes waaaay more confusion than it's worth for students learning a non-English Indo-European language; (2) As your own comment reveals, calling them "grammatical genders" is _very_ Eurocentric for a variety of reasons; and (3) It makes an implicit connection between the grammar of a [European] langauge's nouns and genitals, which is _utterly Barking Mad._ And that's without even bringing in any sociopolitical issues. ^_^ ]
@@John_Weiss Lunar and solar are already taken for another grammatical feature: Gemination-triggering letters after a definite article in Arabic.
@@erkinalp Then don't call the Arabic noun-classes "lunar" or "solar". 😆
My comment is about the names of the 3 *German* noun-classes.
@@John_Weiss What about equine(das Pferd), asine(der Esel) and giraffine(die Giraffe)?
Firstly, I like that you cover this topic as it is rarely explained in English. However, you should mind your vocabulary. "Transexuals" is a very old-fashioned word and is often seen as an insult, transgender is the preferred term. Secondly, these people are not necessarily non-binary, that is a separate category which has nothing to do with physical sex.
A bit nitpicky sure, but important nonetheless.
I think using "transsexual" might be a Germanism on his part, since the German language doesn't distinguish between Sex and Gender (which is the case for most languages).
@@k-techpl7222 Are you sure about that? Looking at simple online dictionaries, 'transexual' gets translated to 'transsexuelle' whereas 'transgender' gets translated to 'transgender.' Additionally, when looking at the German statistics in Google Trends, 'transgender' has consistently been used more frequently than 'transsexual.'
Putting that together I think it might be more of an age thing, with older folks sticking to the old term (even if they do not necessarily oppose the trans community). The same thing is the case with Dutch, which I'm more familiar with.
@@baux_dud Actually, I was not.
I guess it's an age thing.
If I am correct term transexual is term coined in time where difference between sex and gender was not fully realised. Today some people still use it to reffer to people who go throw medical transition but even that meaning is slowly disapearing.
I think they both could work, Transgender = there's a mismatch between the gender and sex, therefore a "crossing" relationship between the two
Transsexual = Someone who changed their bodily features to match the opposite sex, therefore "crossing" from one sex to another
That's just my understanding though, I might be wrong.
'Transsexual' is considered by most to be an outdated term. 'Transgender' is considered to be a more accurate and inclusive term that the majority of trans people prefer.
Great video!
Thank you!
1:46 "Feuerwehrkraft" has a few thousand search results.
* cries in French *
French is kinda easy to avoid genders.
Usually I just use the maskulin form of any human-specific word, like "der Lehrer / die Lehrer" and obviously mean all genders. I see the discrimination and the intention to find a better solution, but the word "Lehrer*innen" with the weird break is not my type of speaking. :)
I think, the german language should not be made any longer; a lot of german sentences are already too long for learners. :)
Great video by the way!
The word "obviously", so casually thrown in, is exactly what it's about.
Some doubt that it's obvious. That's what research is going on about.
The purpose of languages is not to be easy to learn for people who didn't grow up with it.
@T. K. And who does that? Apart from some East German elderly women, I have never noticed such behavior in anyone. And it always comes across as... a bit strange. Not only for me.
@@AndersGehtsdochauch I notice this all the time. In women of all ages. With some exceptions, though (teachers, social workers, pastors...). Strange for some people, sure. But just for some.
@@fpwu So you live on a different planet... Well, then.
How about we just rename the grammatical genders male into elam, female into elamef, neuter into reteun and acceppt that elam is usually the default form.
Really the problem isn't the language, it's understanding the arbitrary nature of the nomenclature.
We will be discussing next that in math any number higher than one should be made equal to one, otherwise it would discriminate against minorities. Fractions should be included in binary code. And companies making profit will write numbers of color.
Sorry, that's b.s. Why? Because when you talk about people, grammatical gender is not an abstract entity. Grammatical gender transports meaning. This even applies to inanimate objects. The ideas associated with "sun" and "moon", for example, differ greatly depending on whether the article is masculine or feminine in the respective language.
And your are ignoring the recepients of language. It makes a huge difference for girls whether you speak about "Physiker" or "Physikerinnen und Physiker". Studies have shown the importance of explicitely addressing women and girls over and over. It might not make a difference for you, but for others it does!
And if it wouldn't make any difference we could just switch to a generic feminine form. In most cases the male version would be automatically included in the feminine word.
I happen to live in 4 (and at times 5) different languages. The biggest difficulty in translation and interpretation is when someone uses what is now called 'non binary pronouns' . In English 'they' ist used instead of 'he' or 'she'. That certainly does not work with all languages.
As a nonbinary half-kraut, this is a whole ass nightmare.
In my opinion, we should just all switch to Hungarian to solve this problem for good.
Interesting fact about Hungarian (at least as it relates to translation)... Despite having inclusive forms for "he/she/it" equivalents, translating software like Google defaults to masculine or sometimes God forbid "They", despite contextually there being no mention of a physical person or living being.
We tried to switch all to German 80 years ago, didn't work well.
Das eigentliche Problem ist eher, dass die Leute nicht verstehen (wollen), dass Genus ≠ Sexus ist.
Daher sehe ich das Problem mit „der Raum ist voller Ärzte“ nicht, da „Arzt - Ärzte“ nun mal die Grundform des Wortes ist, die zwar mit der männlichen Form fast immer deckungsgleich ist (maskulinum generalis; es gibt aber auch ein paar Ausnahmen), dies aber definitiv keinerlei „Sexismus“ darstellt.
Arzt/Ärzte muss nicht zwangsläufig „nur Männer“ heißen, es ist ebenfalls die korrekte Form für eine gemischte Anzahl and Ärzten, und das nicht nur im Deutschen, sondern auch in anderen Sprachen wie z.B. Spanisch (männliche Form = Mischform und nur Männer, weibliche Form = nur Frauen).
Alleinig Ärztin/Ärztinnen ist hingegen eine exklusive Form, die definitiv die Anwesendheit von Männern ausschließt.
Grammatikalisch ist die Grundform des Wortes im Plural (und theoretisch sogar im Singular, „Sie ist ein Arzt“, ist aber eher selten) ausreichend, und da Genus ≠ Sexus ist, ist es auch nicht sexistisch, da sich die Sprache nicht um dein faktisches Geschlecht (Sexus) schert, sondern um das Geschlecht (Genus) des Wortes selbst, was nicht zwangsweise zu dem eigenen Geschlecht (sowohl faktisches als auch „soziales“) passen muss (siehe z.B. „die Hebamme, die Krankenschwester“ auch für Männer).
Sternchen, Binnenmajuskel, Sprachpausen und andere Einschübe verunstalten die Sprache eher, als dass sie helfen, und selbst bei etwaigen sonstigen Geschlechtern, seien sie physisch (Gendefekte, Umoperierte) oder mental (Transexuelle), ist dies unnötig, da wie gesagt Genus ≠ Sexus ist.
Bei Aussagen wie „das Tierheim ist voller Hasen“ macht auch keiner ein Fass auf und beharrt auf ein „voller Hasen und Häsinen“, da das „Hasen“ bereits die ausreichende Mischform für eine größere Anzahl an Hasen ist, obgleich des Geschlechts des Tiers.
Doppelformen sind optional (und eigentlich redundant), sind aber jedoch die einzig grammatikalisch korrekten Formen, wenn verglichen mit Sternchen, Unterstrichen und sonstigen Undingen.
Richtig. Man denkt bei einem Satz wie "der Raum ist voller Arbeitskräfte" auch nicht, dass alles Frauen sind, weil "die Arbeitskraft" weiblich ist.
Die Menschen sind sich ja einig, dass sich Sprache ändern kann/ändert. Das Problem ist aber, dass einige wohl denken, die Änderungen wurden dem gemeinen Volk alle vorgegeben. Sie sehen halt nicht, dass sich die Sprache durch die Art der Benutzung ändert.
@@HalfEye79 Das größte Problem das ich sehe ist, dass alles von jetzt auf gleich forciert werden muss, und wer nicht spurtet, wird direkt als Sexist, Masochist oder sonstiges diffamiert, weil man ja angeblich gegen Feminismus, Gleichheit und „Fortschritt“ sei, obwohl die Grammatik und Orthographie auf deiner Seite sind.
Wie gesagt, anstatt dass diese ganze Sprachverschandelung betrieben und gelernt wird, sollten eindeutige Unterschiede zwischen Genus und Sexus klipp und klar aufgezeigt werden, sodass jedermann dies versteht und nicht mehr dort Problem sucht oder „aufzeigt“, wo sie mit richtigem Wissen per se gar nicht existieren.
Dass im Singular eher die geschlechter-spezifische Form benutzt wird („Er sagt, er sei Arzt“ - „Sie sagt, sie sei Ärztin“), finde ich persönlich absolut natürlich und nachvollziehbar, da der Singular etwas persönliches ist, wobei die generische Form („Er sagt, er sei Arzt“ - „Sie sagt, sie sei Arzt“) grammatikalisch nicht falsch ist, sie im Singular jedoch archaisch geworden ist.
Im Plural empfinde ich dies durch die Doppelformen hingegen lästig und unnatürlich, da man nicht lange um den heißen Brei rumreden will, sondern dem Gegenüber seine Gedanken mitteilen will. Wer das machen will, kann das gerne tun, aber es ist aus grammatikalischer Sicht eher redundant (da die Grundform beide Geschlechter beinhaltet) und sollte daher auch optional sein.
Störend empfinde ich auch die Nennung der weiblichen Form als erstes, gefolgt von der männlichen Form, da somit die Form des Wortes, welche mit der Grundform deckungsgleich ist, untergeordnet erwähnt wird, was schon sehr befremdlich wirkt.
Bei unterschiedlichen Wörtern hingegen empfinde ich die Nennung des weiblichen Wortes als oftmals natürlicher, wie bei Damen und Herren, Mama und Papa, aber nicht bei Bruder und Schwester.
Denke letzteres ist allerdings der Gewohnheit zu verschulden, und ist dementsprechend definitiv subjektiv.
@@HalfEye79 Die Arbeitskraft ist ein abstrakter Oberbegriff und daher ein irreführendes Beispiel, bzw eigentlich überhaupt kein Beispiel für das, worum es hier geht. Sonst könnte man ja immer die feminine Plural-Form benutzen, und niemand würde je an Frauen denken. Probier das mal aus, es wird schiefgehen. So findest du selbst raus, was ich meine, warum deine Beispiele hier alle hinken. Dann musst du es mir nicht glauben und kannst beruhigt schlafen gehen.
@@HalfEye79 Genau, und da sich die Art der Sprache nur durch Benutzung ändert, wird es Zeit, dass wir das in die Tat umsetzen. Manche Rüpelbegriffe wie das N-Wort waren früher ganz "normal", heute sind sie das nicht mehr. Das ist nicht vom Himmel gefallen, sondern kam zustande, indem ein Problem erkannt und angegangen wurde. Wären alle Menschen solche Respektverweigerer, die nichts ändern wollen weil sie persönlich ja nichts stört, dann wären solche Rüpelbegriffe heute noch "normal".
@@AndersGehtsdochauch
Richtig. Die "Arbeitskraft" ist genau so ein abstrakter Oberbegriff, wie auch der "Arbeiter".
Warum soll dann aber letzterer gegendert werden, ersterer aber nicht?
The problem is that noun composed of truncated verb +"er" are grammatically masculine. In German, some people resent that because of the article "der" and demand that there must be a female form. In English, however, that is no problem as there is only one article "the". There are a few female forms in English like "actress", but nobody would demand that a female teacher has to be called a "teacheress".
The issue with the asterisk/colon solution is also creating words that don't exist. For example if you do it for doctors... "Ärzt*in", you now created the word "Ärzt" which isn't a thing so I am fully on the side of just sticking to saying "Ärzte und Ärztinnen", it's literally just 2 extra words we should all have the time for that until we can find a truly neutral solution.
Or you could just use the male form as neutral plural as it has always been for many millions of years before that Twitter SJW PC culture bubble started talking too loudly about oh how oppressive it is.
Totally agree. IMO the asterisk or colon should only (if ever) be used in cases when it perfectly makes sense, e.g. "die Schüler*innen". Both "die Schüler" and "die Schülerinnen" are actual words. However, it still looks informal and I'd rather use the more wordy version. And in spoken German that's another can of worms. Some people don't put a long enough pause before the "-in" or "-innen" which makes it sound like you are specifically using the female version, e.g. "Schülerinnen".
I don't think that was twitter or the more extreme and reactionary fringes of the third wave (which I'll assume you mean by "Twitter SJW PC culture bubble") but second wave feminism.
Which doesn't make it any less daft in light of nonbinary people existing but I can see how one may get the idea that it could be a good idea if you're still using a very binary worldview, which the second wave very much was using (along with gender-essentialism as a way to rebut restrictions on what clothing women could wear, which of course turned out to be a somewhat transphobic idea...but that's an essay for another day).
I suppose a lot of it can be summed up as "It seemed like a good idea at the time".
diminutives are male in Russia -- so in Russian "child" is male even if it's refering to a girl ((however most English complain about the German word))
The masculine is already the norm.
‘Jemand hat _seine_ Jacke vergessen.’
‘Wem _seine_ Jacke ist das?’
Lehrer*innen is unnecessarily long and it sounds weird
Das heißt: Wessen Jacke ist diese? Der Dativ ist des Genitivs Tod.
@@LarsEllerhorst
Does not apply to the first example.
The masculine is indeed the norm. And that is what we are trying to change. Get over it. You don't have to use neutral forms, but it would be polite if you did so. And you will get used to hear "Lehrer*innen" until it doesn't sound weird anymore. It is a bit longer, but it is also a necessity to change the masculine norm - therefore, it is not "unnecessarily long".
@@wiesoimmerich111 das Lehrist. das Lernist. Das Lehrist unterrichtet das Lernist.
In Spanish we’re having a similar problem, though I’d say it’s a little bit worse because all words are either female or male.
When people are trying to refer to something that can be male or female they typically write:
- Both versions of the noun: Maestra/o (teacher)
- Replace the letter that denotes the gender with an x or an @: Bomberx, Bomber@ (firefighter). The problem with this approach is that words become unpronounceable
Now as to how we refer to non-binary people, there really isn’t a solution yet, and it may not come for a while because, at least where I live, people aren’t really accepting of non-binary people, though some people are starting to use a third no-binary gender. This gender uses the elle pronoun and uses the e letter to represent a noun’s gender:
El es un doctor (He is a doctor)
Ella es una doctora (She is a doctor)
Elle es une doctore (They are a doctor)
Pero eso es locura total
Don't forget Latino as well = where Latino/Latina becomes Latinx
It would be better to replace the "-o/-a"" with an "-e": bombere, bomberes. Very pronounceable.
The funny thing is in Polish - the feminine form was widely abandoned during the Communist era and now, even though we know much more about non-binary in gender etc. it is being slowly reintroduced, because… well, easier language is not something you should have presumably :P
And tbh, standardizing everything to the masculine form used for everybody is probably what the gendered languages are most likely to do, as these forms are mostly the shortest and therefore the most convenient.
@@naruciakk Well, the history of courtesy, humanity and respect isn't really packed with choosing the most "convenient" things only.
If e.g. there's only one *xy* left on the table and I want it, the most convenient thing for me to do would be, just take it.
But courtesy requires me to ask the others first whether they want it.
How inconvenient, in some way, isn't it! lol
@@naruciakk If everything was standardised and reduced to "just the male forms", would those forms still be male forms at all?
They would cease to be male forms and would end up being the only and therefore a neutral form.
Since the male form is usually shorter than the female one, it would be more efficient to choose the male over the female form for being a generic neutral form.
@@TheZett Well, yes, that was the point I was trying to make :P.
Make the easiest form the only and gender-neutral form and don't try to force people to use some constructed ones that no one would use anyway.
And tbh, gramatical genders as a whole aren't problematic here. What's the problem with the feminine Katze for example. The problem is when it is about a person.
@Anders Gehtsdochauch The language however is mostly about convenience, because trust me - no one is going to use some inefficient artificial grammatical forms.
I lived in Germany for 16 years and still got it wrong most times if I wasn’t familiar with a word.
Nevermind even germans get it wrong sometimes.
Es ist wirklich sehr interessant, was sich da in den vergangenen Jahren tut. Als ich klein war, ging der Trend sehr stark in Richtung egalitären Umgangs miteinander, und es bot sich an, für diesen Zweck das angelsächsische „you" zu übernehmen, d. h. alle wurden unterschiedslos geduzt, um sich von gefühlt verlogenen bürgerlichen Umgangsformen zu distanzieren. Als das irgendwann einmal fast alle fast immer taten, wurde klar, dass es so auch langweilig ist. In der modernen Debatte schwingt, meistens unausgesprochen, mit, dass differenzierte Sprache mit nuancierten Formen des gegenseitigen Umgangs irgendwie doch wichtig zu sein scheint - bloß wie macht man das? Das Deutsche hat sich ja viele Differenzierungsmöglichkeiten aus den älteren indoeuropäischen Sprachen erhalten (eben zum Beispiel die drei Nominalklassen), und ich persönlich fände es schade, auf solche Möglichkeiten der feinen Unterschiede zu verzichten. Es wäre wahrscheinlich auch kontraproduktiv, wenn es einem gerade darum geht, für möglichst jede Gesprächssituation den am besten geeigneten Rahmen zu finden. Manchmal muss ich an mittelalterliche Höflinge, spanische Hidalgos oder französische Musketiere denken, die bereit waren, sich für jede auch nur geahnte Unhöflichkeit sofort zu duellieren, was mir der momentanen, recht gereizten Atmosphäre zu entsprechen scheint. Ich vermute, dass, je mehr Leute sich für die Möglichkeiten der Sprache ( in unserem Fall der deutschen Sprache, in der doch wirklich wahnsinnig viele Dinge möglich und sagbar sind) begeistern, ohne gleich polemisch zu werden oder Anderen bösen Willen zu unterstellen, ganz famose neue Wendungen und Formulierungen aufkommen werden. "The game, Mrs. Hudson, is on."
das was du ansprichst mit dem trend zum dutzen hin finde ich seehr spannend und würde sehr gerne mehr darüber erfahren!:) was och nach dem lesen noch gerne hinzufügen wollen würde ist, dass das was du als gereizte stimmung/gereiztheit ganz richtig erkennst nun auch nichts ist, was menschen zum spaß ausdrücken... hinter jeder emotion steckt ein grund und wenn es um sprache und unsichtbarmachung der eigenen lebensrealität oder gar identität durch sprache geht, die eben so gar nicht "mitdenkt" wie das so oft behauptet wird, da kann mensch schon mal wütend werden... ich finde es schade, dass in solchen depatten wut oft abgetan wird oder verurteilt, anstatt dahinter zu blicken und sich (oder die menschen selbst) zu fragen, wieso sie denn so wütend sind und sich versuchen hineinzuversetzen. als mann, der die meisten privilegien von geburt an als selbstverständlich mitbekommt ohne sie vlt selbst auch je wahrzunehmen, da "mann" nie diskriminiert wurde oder nur "mitgedacht" ist das zum beispiel sehr schwierig, da einfach zu sagen man finde es halt "schöner/unkomplizierter"... meiner meinung nach sollte bequemlichkeit nicht auf kosten von diskriminierung verhandelt werden. es zeigt sich z.B. sehr interessant und amüsant wie ich finde, wie aufgebracht männer plötzlich sind, wenn in Reden z.B. einfach das generische Femininum verwendet wird... da funktioniert das "ja aber ihr seid doch mitgemeint" ja auch nicht ;)
es gibt im netz genug betroffene die sich dazu äußern, denen mensch auch einfach mal zuhören könnte:) einfach mal youtubes oder googles suchfunktion betätigen
Das you bedeutete eigentlich ursprünglich ihr, du ist thou.
Ich habe eine Idee:
Lasst uns einfach bei Mehrheit den weiblichen Artikel nehmen und das generische Maskulinum. So können sich alle angesprochen fühlen.
No no. The politicians are not handling this well. Not the German language.
Most forms of Dutch have only two genders, common and neuter, where common represents nouns that were formerly masculine or feminine. But it has suffixes for female individuals much like German does, as well. The trend in Dutch has to be to stop using words with such suffixes, and use the more unmarked, basic form. What was once a masculine gendered word becomes a non-gendered word. This can be used for German as well: both "der Lehrer" and "die Lehrer".
Some people may argue that it's sexist to choose the old masculine form as the new default all the time. But one may also wonder why the more basic, unmarked form was always given the masculine gender in the first place, and why feminine forms are always derived from masculine forms. In this sense, it feels more sexist to use the suffixes, and more egalitarian to "reclaim" the basic form for all genders.
English is much less gendered now than German or Dutch, but we do the same. We used to use actor for men and actress for women, but now tend to use actor for either.
Hot take, german doesnt have a male version of job titles. "in diesem Krankenhaus arbeiten 30 Ärzte". No one would read this as "oh, why are they employing only male doctors". "Mein Kind ist Arzt" - "Oh, sie haben also einen Sohn?" Again, no one.
Disagree. In the first example I would assume there are 30 male doctors at the hospital and would expect the number of female or nonbinary doctors to follow in the next sentence. In the second example I would assume the child to be male or potentially nonbinary but definitely not female.
Pretty soon German is gonna have transgendered nouns.
Ich bin der letzte Mensch, der nicht offen für verschiedenste Geschlechter wäre. Aber das in unserer Sprache abzubilden ist fast unmöglich.
Interessanterweise habe ich mich niemals als Frau benachteiligt oder ausgegrenzt gefühlt wenn jemand (besonders bei Berufsgruppen) von Lehrern, Busfahrern und Ärzten sprach, denn in meinem Kopf war völlig klar das damit die Menschen aller Geschlechter dieses Berufs gemeint sind. Ich kann auch gut verstehen, dass Menschen die sich als Minderheit fühlen gern darauf aufmerksam machen, dass die existieren und gleichberechtigt/anerkannt sein wollen. Aber das erreicht man m.E. weniger über Sprache. So fände ich es beispielsweise gut, wenn Transgender Personen bzw. Hermaphroditen im Ausweis ein D statt M oder W tragen dürfen, auch (m/w/d) in Anzeigen finde ich total korrekt.
Kürzlich argumentierte eine Freundin, als ich mich über den "gluttural stop" aufregte "Wieso, Du sagst doch auch Spiegelei ohne Probleme zu haben, da setzt Du auch zwischen Spiegel und Ei ab.".......sie sah nicht, warum ich der Ansicht war das sei kein gültiger Vergleich.
Dann argumentieren Leute wieder mit "nur weil wir irgendwas IMMER schon so gemacht haben muss es nicht richtig sein, Sprache lebt und entwickelt sich". Ja. Okay. Das ist korrekt. Sprachen sind nicht statisch. Das ist aber doch kein Grund sie zu "verhunzen" nur weil Frauenrechtlerinnen immer noch nicht verstehen, dass sie ihre Ziele längst erreicht haben ....ehm okay nee, jetzt wird es politisch, lach. Und ein Roman ist es auch schon. Also es ist klar..........ich wollte mit dieser Wall of Text einfach nur sagen "ich finde *innen auch überzogen".
Given that Swiss German does not have the glottal stop that is found in German German (the one that is inserted before morpheme-initial stressed vowels), I wonder if the glottal stop solution would work at all there?
Of course you have that, too. Many Germans say the same thing about German -- but they're simply unaware that they _do_ have a glottal stop.
*cries in german non binary *
Modern Greek also assigns all diminutives the neuter gender. Why is this? Does it go back to PIE, or is there some logic to it?
Funnily enough, in Russian the problem first appeared in the first half of the 20th century and is back now. When it comes to professions then-femenists somewhat successfully pushed for masculine-as-default under the premise that nobody would discriminate against them by looking at their job title alone. Now though, a weird subset of modern feminists push for the opposite, as they specifically want for their sex to be visible in their titles. The weird part is that they are adamant that specifically the suffix k should be used to form all the feminine forms in all cases, insisting that it is "grammatically correct". It is in fact not. Normally it is only used with a specific declension and in combination with specific vowels. I've seen the world "uchitelka" used for "teacher" instead of neutral-masculine "uchitel' or standard-femenine "uchitel'nitsa". Considering that the feminine form "uchilka" exists, and has a dismissive/offensive ring to it, I don't know how or why they came up with this one specifically. For some reason they are okay with their version, but find the standard one prejorative. I've also spotted occasional incorrect uses of feminine forms with professions where both masculine and feminine forms exist, but have different meanings. I'm specifically talking about the words mashinist and mashinistka, where the first one means train or tram driver, regardless of sex, and the second one means "typist", again, for both sexes. All of that is fairly interesting to observe, and I try to stick to the sidelines and maintain neutrality as much as I can, but I admit that when you happen to just be speaking and someone starts correcting you by appealing to non existent linguistic authority, it's very difficult for me to hold back my background in linguistics and not to dwell into lengthy explanations of the whole matter, for fear of appearing to be a bigot or a passionate idiot.
Gerade noch ein schönes Beispiel gefunden (WDR) : ruclips.net/video/qeH0u4vpSIQ/видео.html
Der Knacklaut der Reporterin bei 4 : 00 klingt für mich hier viel seltsamer als die Verwendung des generischem Maskulinums durch die Interviewte bei 4 : 12.
Wir sollten im Deutschunterricht ein Anschreiben zur Übung schreiben. Sie hat "in" hinter meine Berufsbeschreibung gesetzt
Switch to finnish! We have none of those articles to worry about and only one word for he&she. If you want to make a point of a person's gender you need to say a male person or a female teacher. We don't really use miss/mrs Smith type of articles either because your maritial status is irrelevant. Our language has been equal and gender neutral for a long time, there's still few words like chairman that aren't equal, but we're ahead of nearly every other language in the equality issues.
Lucky you. The issue is just about the plural, it is in general a plural of the masculin form but includes all and is regarded gender neutral. Only if you want to express a plural of only females you use a female pluralform like in french or spanish. But some regard this already as a form of gender discrimination.
But Finnish has 15 (!) grammatical cases. I think I'll pass on that one.
@@imrehundertwasser7094 Do we? It can't be that hard, I've been speaking it since I was just two years old😂
@@myslithecat At that age you can pick up any language easily. Unfortunately I'm somewhat older than two ...
I love how factual you present this very controversial topic, with acknowledging the existence of nonbinary folk etc. :)
The existence of nonbinary folk is only an "issue" because morons can't accept that the base form is _obviously_ the inclusive form. "Lehrer" = "a person who teaches (gender not specified)".
@@theuncalledfor Imagine if people refer to you using word gendered in opposite way than you want. It feels incredibly invalidating like everyone is telling you you are liar.
@@petrfedor1851
It's only "gendered" because idiots like you have _decided_ to consider it gendered. You are getting offended at others because of your poor decision.
Ich finde das generische Maskulin gut.
- Angela Merkel ist die erste Bundeskanzlerin.
(Angela Merkel is the first (female) chancellor.)
- Angela Merkel ist die neunte Bundeskanzlerin.
(Angela Merkel is the ninth chancellor.)
Both sentences are correct! :D
Now the question: How do you answer this question correctly?
"Die wievielte Bundeskanzlerin ist Angela Merkel?"
or... how do you ask that question without it being ambiguous? :D
My opinion is that it's the best way to use the generic maskulinum. That means that the words that are said in maskulin Version refers to the addressed group regardless of their gender, sex or whatever. Yes there are two options then to address women, that is a bit unfair for men and all the other people, but I think ok as the disadvantage isn't that big but the benefit is extreme.
Regarding the argument that women and other people don't feel addressed then, here are some ideas: Nobody was talking about banning the gendering German. You are still allowed to use it, please do it wisely but I would suggest to leave the decision to the people. For example: Feel free to use the gender star in job announcements or advertisements. It would be cool of you don't have to do, but it would be recommended to do it in this special case. It's mostly not too complex and good understandable. After the title you can switch back to the generic maskulinum to make it easier for everybody. On law texts I would suggest to always use the generic maskulinum as the texts are complicated with a lot of roles anyway. And it doesn't matter whether people FEEL addressed, they are and judges should be smart enough to know that.
Regarding the argument that it could cause confusion to women whether they are meant or not, well then these Women need better education.
If we do it we should use the generic maskulinum in the right way. If we day "Lehrer" we really mean teachers and not "non-female teachers". If you want to clarify the sex/gender, you should use an adjective, otherwise you confuse a lot of people.
Andrew Anglin and Snake Baker sent me it's 3-22-23 😊👍🏻
Or people are nitpicking
In some english accents (like mine) some Ts are glottalised, like "butter (bu'er)", or "glottal (glo'al)". And we dont repersent all butter with a hiccup, it's just taken as normal.
Yes, but as an addition to a plethora of other words, it begins to sound like a hiccup - "Firemen" "firewomen" "fire'women", with the final having a glottal stop.
im no german speaker, but wouldnt using “-person” like in english be a good solution? is it awkward for german speakers? does the fact that its grammatically feminine cause problems for people who dont identify as female?
The issue is, there are words having a differnt meaning just because of a different gender or are singular or plural depending on the article. Exampel: Der Lehrer (teacher) is a singular masculin subject but can be a male or female, die Lehrer is plural, masculin and feminin teachers. Only Lehrerin is singular for a feminin teacher and Lehrerinnen is the plural. Using person would be difficult, because it sound very artificial and the word person itself has a feminin article: Die Person. Therefore, people who are offended by the masculin subject "der Mensch" (the human) are offended by the femenin "Die Person" (the person) too. Even more, using the pronoun "er" for Mensch or "sie" for Person, both are definite masculin and feminin. The whole discussion is an artificial conflict in genderism. Political and social issues are now elevated into a discussion about grammar. The easy solution in my point of view would be male subject having a masculin form, female subjects a feminin and everyting else a neuter form. That would be logical and even a 3 year old would understand this rule. So, a bull is male, a cow is female and a calf is neutral ( in most cases that is already the case in German language, with some exceptions. Every other subject like door, car, desk, spoon etc. would become neutral.
The issue here is that the "gender" aka genus of words had originally nothing to do with (biological) sex or gender. (Indo-European is pretty well studied.) They just became associated with one. It may have been smarter to reduce the feminine forms and push the shorter maskulinum as the generic form like in English.
@T. K. Maybe because English has in general a more straight grammatical structure and a modernized sample of word- or in opposite: because German is still a much more traditional language?
In German, the term is „(Nominatives) Genus“ … if you talked about „grammatisches Geschlecht“ people would wonder why you thought grammar had penises and vaginas. 😆
Linguistically, they're more properly called "Noun Classes." The Niger-Congo languages have anywhere from 10 to 26 of them.
Did you even watch the video? He said that at the beginning.
Liebe Mitgliederinnen und Mitglieder, ... ;-)
ICh habe tatsächlich schon mal Mitglieder*innen gelesen
"Liebe Bürger..." (genndering makes me sick) "He, Leute!" ..... and yes you can even avoid adressing people ---- a common practice from Nothern Germany is "ich mach mal so" (then you knock somewhere - like on a table and that's it) ... it's possible to get what you want without adressing one with "Sie" (which is a troubling pronoun) etc. .
A real first world problem for woke people(-innen). A person is a more abstract concept like a legal entity, but a man is flesh and blood. Latin words are always distant and sophisticated.
I fail to understand why this should be a problem at all? If you believe in equally of people from different genders the words you use, the songs you listen to or festivals you celebrate doesn't matter. It's like Christmas, it's supposed to be a religious ceremony in its roots (Christian and before that seasonal festival from Europe's pagans) but it's perfectly normal for Atheists or Agnostics to celebrate it too.
Symbols and words doesn't matter that much as long as our beliefs are not sexist or racist. If we were talking about some words or symbols that have no meaning beside their offensive usage such as the word "negro" changing it was legit but this is an entire language we wanna change!
I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment.
The issue is that some words used to not be perceived as insulting, such as „negro“ meaning „black“.
Just look at the word „queer“, which used to be used as an insult and was presumably „reclaimed“ by transsexuals as an „empowering“ word, instead of being used as an insult.
By default a word only has as much power/meaning as you are willing to give it, and if you aren’t willing, then it is not necessarily an exclusively insulting word.
@@TheZett Are you just expanding on the OP's post? Because it feel like you both aren't wrong.
The Northern Germanic languages lost (most of) their genders. I wonder how that happened; and could it happen to German?
Icelandic, Faroese, and Norwegian still use all three grammatical genders. Danish has merged the neuter with masculine, and Swedish has merged masculine with feminine (except for the pronouns).
Yes, it is complicated... my guess is: What we need is not a "solution", but a lot of tolerance - with every speaker. I personally will not give up my way of speaking, and so should anybody else - whatever their way of expressing themselves is. A common way of speaking will evolve, eventually.
Wasn't that what we've been trying for a few thousand years now? Lack of awareness isn't something we should by any means try to persevere, if it's at all possible, once the awareness has come up.
@@AndersGehtsdochauch Well, we tried for a long time, and comparing my life with that of the average person 1.000 years ago, we were pretty successful - so that's the way to go, I should say. If this "awareness" is a real thing and indeed more than the hobby of a rather eloquent minority, it will establish itself, eventually. For now, the surveys on this matter speak a very clear language.
Describe it and use the plural. "Wir suchen lehrende Fachkräfte". “We are looking for teaching professionals”. Weird and awkward? Yes! The best solution I can think of? again yes! 😀
And if you are only looking for one teaching professionals?
What a problem.
It only will not matter if it does not matter.
First time I heard a binnen I or asterisk pronounced was at a Judith Butler talk. Made me go "Huh, so that's what that sounds like".
Edit: Judith Butler did the talk in German btw, which was a lovely gesture but also made it hard to follow because of subpar acoustics in the venue and accented speech.
wow! I had no idea she could speak German that well.
One solution I heard was to use nominalised adjectives. In the same way that Deutsche works for both male/female (and neuter), you could have der/die Lehrende, der/die Feurkämpfende, der/die Bürgershafthabende...
Disgusting. No.
Grammatically incorrect. Imagine a LKW-Fahrende standing on the side of the road making a break and not driving the truck.
First world problems...
THANK YOU. -A nonbinary german
That's a good explanation. For my feeling, the problem is made up artificially. Some came up with the idea "teacher" comes with the idea of being a man.
I say "some", cause there has never been a survey among language users (Germans), if they necessarily think on a certain gender, when talking about a teacher.
It's more a precocious prevention of the possibility to not think on both genders, initialized by some activists.
You could go to the "Friseur" (anonymously, male) and it was kind of normal, you were most often serviced by a women.
There are some biased professions like carpenter or nurse, who tend to have a more male or female picture in mind, since only one gender usually picks this job.
"Wenn Berufe in einer geschlechtergerechten Sprache dargestellt werden (Nennung der männlichen und weiblichen Form, zum Beispiel „Ingenieurinnen und Ingenieure“ statt nur „Ingenieure") schätzen Kinder typisch männliche Berufe als erreichbarer ein und trauen sich selbst eher zu, diese zu ergreifen. Zu diesem Ergebnis kommen Psychologinnen und Psychologen an der Freien Universität Berlin: In zwei Experimenten lasen sie 591 Grundschülerinnen und -schülern Berufsbezeichnungen entweder in geschlechtergerechter oder in männlicher Sprachform vor und ließen die Kinder die Berufe bewerten. Die Ergebnisse der Studie wurden jetzt in der Fachzeitschrift „Social Psychology“ veröffentlicht."
und hier noch die Quelle: www.dgps.de/index.php?id=143&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=1610&cHash=1308c97486a0f55bc30d6a7cf12bf49f
And an abstract in English: "In this study, the authors tested a linguistic intervention to strengthen children's self-efficacy toward stereotypically male occupations. Two classroom experiments with 591 primary school students from two different linguistic backgrounds (Dutch or German) showed that the presentation of occupational titles in pair forms (e.g., Ingenieurinnen und Ingenieure, female and male engineers), rather than in generic masculine forms (Ingenieure, plural for engineers), boosted children's self-efficacy with regard to traditionally male occupations, with the effect fully being mediated by perceptions that the jobs are not as difficult as gender stereotypes suggest"
@@Arcsinner A picture or documentary of female truck or crane drivers, would eventually cause the same shift. It's not necessary to modify the language. You can modify or strengthen a certain meaning of words.
@@Arcsinner Bei allem was mit "Gender Studies" zu tun hat, ist höchste Vorsicht geboten, ob da nicht die Vorerwartung der Forschenden die Methodik beeinflusst. ZB die Vorerwartung, dass Mädchen und Jungen nur deshalb verschiedene Berufe wählen, weil die Sprache ihnen geheime Botschaften einflüstere ...
As always, a good and thoughtful contribution. I am all for a gender-neutral language, but the development with the forced *innen-addition for all plural-nouns that describe a group of people makes the language horribly awkward and, instead of solving the problem, it much rather seems to compound it. In English, I understand, there is the opposite tendency, i.e. to avoid special female forms in the few cases where they exist, like "actress" or (probably more outdated) "authoress". These forms single women out as something separate from "normal" actors and authors, and therefore are regarded as rather sexist. I wish, German feminism would also see it that way, at least in the plural-forms. (To a certain degree I can see the sense of the male-female-distinction in the singular, and usually it is less awkard and problematic.)
Do not expect feminism to ever see reason.
You want reason? Try egalitarianism.
well: "die" is always feminin .... :-)
As a NB person with a degree in linguistics, I'n LMAOing. In a good way. And at least in German there are attempts to accommodate my kind, unlike my native language, Russian, which is also heavily gendered.
Жаль, что страну позоришь, "нон-бинарная персона". Есть только мужчины и женщины. Определись уже.
@@dexter2392 вот из-за таких как ты в Рашке жить и невозможно. Х@й я к вам перееду, хоть меня и неоднократно пытались схэдхантить. Я их таможенного союза, но не из вашей помойки
"The" FTW. As an English person learning German, I've never really understood why everything has to be gendered. It just leads to a lack of confidence in speaking when you're unsure of the gender.
In German, the term is „(Nominatives) Genus“ … if you talked about „grammatisches Geschlecht“ people would wonder why you thought nouns had penises and vaginas. 😆
Linguistically, they're more properly called "Noun Classes." The Niger-Congo languages have anywhere from 10 to 26 of them.
Besides, the only reason we call the damn things "genders"is because of a mistranslation of "genus" from Latin into, "gender," instead of, "category."
You could just add readily name the 3 Noun Classes after other prominent members:
Canine (der Hund), Feline (die Katze), Equine (das Pferd)
Lunar (der Mond), Solar (die Sonne), Cosmic (das Weltall)
Spoon (der Löffel), Fork (die Gabel), Knife (das Messer)
…I could go on. 😉 After all, using any of those labels makes about as much sense as implying that nouns have genitals. 😆
Then there's „er“ „sie“ and „es“ - which really translate like this:
„er“ == "he" _or_ "it"
„sie“ == "she" _or_ "it"
„es“ == "he" _or_ "she" _or_ "it"
Once I was fluent, that's how I started thinking of them. In fact, once I was fluent, I stopped thinking of the 3 German noun classes as sex and started thinking of them in terms of word endings.
Why can't we just eliminate all gender in language and simplify things. We Germans like to verschlimmbessern our language and make it more complicated to speak. Writing Bürger*innen isn't a problem, but try to say it. Try to include everyone in speach is difficult. And the suggested glutton stop like in Danish sounds awful. Like you swallows a particular large fly mid word. Why not go the other way and try to find a common ground and simplify it like the Swedish language? Instead of er, sie, es just keep es for objects and animals and sit for all people. Get rid off der, die das and replace it with e.g. dit. And find a simple ending for nouns to point out singular and plural.
Read this
www.belleslettres.eu/content/deklination/genus-gendersprech.php
then you'll understand why you cant just "change" language
„Es“ isn’t even necessarily used for animals in German, like it is the case for English.
German uses er/sie for animals as well, regardless of the animal being male or female („der Hase aß das Gras“ translates into „the (male or female) rabbit ate the grass“).
Because there is no "simply" and "just do that". People don't care what a tiny, tiny minority tells them to be "proper" language. You will note that dialects still exist, and people still use "ß". People as a whole will always go on speaking as they always have. And changing something as central as genders and personal pronouns in German? Forget it.
just for reference - transgender and nonbinary are absolutely not the same thing! transgender (most people don't use transsexual anymore) ppl are not necessarily non-binary, a lot of them are absolutely one of the two binary genders :)
But they can be the same thing, since non-binary people might also identify as transgender. Honestly though, I'm just happy he's talking about us at all, even if he's not 100% right on the terminology. It gives us some visibility and it's one youtuber less where I have to worry about them eventually making a video showing their transphobia.
@@ichbinben. 100% agree with you. It's good to know that some people are supportive even without extensive knowledge about it. it's just sad that the bar is so incredibly low. I mean just reading the comments on here like "this doesn't affect me because I don't think the masculine version being the norm is bad" just makes me incredibly sad. I just want to be a person, not an :in not a * not a divers (which i could go on a whole fucking rant about thats how much I hate it)
@@ichbinben. yeah, true, thats why i said "most" and "some", and not all! and i totally agree, at least talking about the problem of the german language being unnecessarily gendered is already so much better than nothing 😊
2:35 Ausnahmen bestätigen die Regel: "Krankenschwester". Endet sogar auf "er".
Ist aber nicht der Krankenschwester, außer er ist wirklich stark behaart.
@@LarsEllerhorst Manchmal schon: Wem gehört das Stetoskop? Der Krankenschwester! ;-)
"Krankenschwester" ist ein feststehender Begriff, er kommt daher, dass früher Nonnen ("Schwestern") für die Pflege von Kranken zuständig waren. Genauso, wie heute kein Mensch auf die Idee kommt, dass eine Krankenschwester ein Nonne ist, wird hoffentlich heute kein Mensch auf die Idee kommen, dass eine Krankenschwester weiblich sein muss.
Dafür hat man ja das Wort Krankenpfleger etabliert. Oder Flugbegleiter, ähnlicher Hintergrund.
When I was trying to learn German properly at a Volkshochschule there were times my poor brain was blown by the gendering of words. Der Bikini for instance. As far as I can remember this was explained as a bikini is a schwimmanzug and the Anzug bit is the reason it is der.
You shouldn´t try to find a sense into the Grammatical Genders in German. It makes Learning German only more difficult as necessary. Some have a rule, some are only the traditional way of speaking it. And every rule has a huge number of exceptions.
Just learn to every German Noun its Gender. And don´t try to think when doing it.
@@NicolaW72 you make it sound so easy 😉. Sadly the inquisitive part of my brain is just built that way, it always wants to know ‘why!?’ It’s why I gave up with Rosetta Stone, even though I paid for it, and why now Duolingo only manages to sort of maintain what I learned while actually living in Germany. Immersion was working, taking my grandson to a kindergarten where they supportively but firmly refused to speak English was teaching me more German than books or apps ever did. I miss it so much, but sadly a return now is all but impossible, so I continue to try because to give up would mean a certain part of the British public will have had an even bigger victory over me, and I won’t allow that to happen.
@@randomjasmicisrandom I can imagine that.
Speaking with native speakers is always the best way to learn a language - it works then in an intuitive way, not by cramming vocabulary and grammatical rules.
Genders of new and loan words mostly need to make intuitive sense to native German speakers. Sometimes southern and northern Germans disagree on the 'correct' article to use.
Whenever I see someone's preferred pronouns in their bio or email signature in English I keep wondering what the German equivalent would be. Yes, we have he/him and she/her but the ever so elegant they/them somehow doesn't really have a German translation. At least we use "Sie identifizieren sich als nicht-binär" in a completely different way (either as a literal third person plural "sie" or capitalized as a formal address "Sie"). The third person singular non-identified gender, sadly, we are lacking. I, personally, wouldn't have a problem with just using the neuter "es" but it always feels wrong to use it for other people because it can be viewed as an offense (i.e. calling someone an object). As for job descriptions, it seems we'll be stuck with the "(w/m/d)" suffix and it will be even more difficult to replace something like "liebe Bürgerinnen und Bürger" because not everything can be as elegantly - for lack of a better word - "neutered" as "Studierende" and "liebes Volk" still has a weird ring to it in German ears. Language is complicated. I wish there was a qualified comittee who set the rules for a language in the most logical way and we'd just follow those rules. But, sadly, linguistics are only a descriptive discipline and therefore can only react to how people are butchering their language... 🙈
Are you a native English speaker?
Because in German, „er“ „sie“ and „es“ don't really translate to "he" "she" and "it". It's more like:
„er“ == "he" or "it"
„sie“ == "she" or "it"
„es“ == "he" or "she" or "it"
That's how I eventually came to think of them one I became fluent in German. And it's how I explain them to others.
@@John_Weiss No, my native language is German. I know that in German the grammatical gender doesn't necessarily translate to the English use of gender but regarding personal pronouns they are pretty equivalent. And I guarantee you that most people won't like it if you call them "es" even if they don't identify as either male or female.
In general it's probably good to imagine "er", "sie", and "es" in the way you describe but it goes more for the grammatical gender of nouns than for using them literally as the pronouns. Of course the correct form would be, "Das Mädchen heißt Lisa. Es ist vier Jahre alt.", because in this case the "es" refers to the noun "Mädchen" and not necessarily to Lisa herself. You would still use "sie" when referring to the girl when you don't use the word "Mädchen", for example: "Das ist Lisa. Sie ist vier Jahre alt." And generally people have not been very consistent because German doesn't even make sense to Germans sometimes so it has become acceptable to say, "Das Mädchen heißt Lisa. Sie ist vier Jahre alt.", because you are still referring to Lisa.
And again, in regards to personal pronouns it usually is tied to the biological/identified gender just like using an article with a name. You can say "die Lisa" or "der Thomas", but even if Alex identifies as non-binary they might not like being called "das Alex". Some might. Like within my friend group it is completely acceptable to use "es" for a non identified gender of a person. If someone wants to bring their partner to game night we actually would say, "Klar, bring es mit." but this is not the generally accepted way to say that (because there basically is no generally accepted way to say that beyond "sie oder ihn" which doesn't include everyone). Hence my problem.. 😅
@@witerabid Oh! I see!
Yes, I was focusing more on the Genus of the noun than on the gender of the person that the pronoun is referring to.
Everything you said makes perfect sense.
I will admit to being surprised, however, that the pronoun, „es“ is associated solely with objects, what with „Mädchen“ und „Fräulein“, I'dve thought that the cognitive ties would be a little less rigid. Unlike English, where calling a person, “it”, has _always_ been dehumanizing and therefore insulting.
Ich hoffe, daß ich Sie nicht beleidigt habe, weil ich nicht von Ihrem Kommentar gechecked habe, daß Deutsch Ihre Muttersprache ist.
@@John_Weiss I'll take that as a compliment. It must mean that my English is good enough to be mistaken for a native speaker's English. 😉
Yes, German is pretty complicated in that regard. It always depends on whether the pronoun is actually tied to a noun (like "Mädchen") - then using "es" is completely fine - or if the noun you're referring to is a name, because that implies you do know the person's gender. Let's put it this way: "der Hund" is always an "er", unless you know whether it's actually a good boy or a good girl - "die Katze" will always be a "sie", unless you actually know its sex. But in either case you can always use the correct personal pronoun even though the noun is a different grammatical gender (because German wasn't complicated enough). "Das Mädchen geht heute zum ersten Mal in die Schule. Sie freut sich schon sehr." is perfectly acceptable to German ears and the arguably more correct version with "es" will make people look at you weirdly for a split second until they (hopefully) realize that they had originally learned it like that in school. But since the word "Mädchen" already implies that they are female most Germans will just use the sex as the grammatical gender in any other context.
You can even use this construct to imply the biological sex of, let's say, a pet: "Mein Hund hat mich heute Nacht ständig geweckt. Sie hat alle 5 Minuten an meiner Tür gekratzt." Instead of using the female "die Hündin" - which exists too - most people will still use the unspecific "der Hund" even though they do know the dog's sex and afterwards use the female "personal" pronouns. If you learn German as a second language and you learned the strict grammar rules this will sound wrong to you. But this is actually widely accepted and used and everyone will just view it as the second sentence simply giving the added information that the dog - unspecified in the first sentence - is actually female.
I hope this wasn't too confusing. 🙈 Learning a new language is already tough enough. But the actual use of a language being different from the rules you'll learn makes it orders of magnitude more difficult. Now you don't only have to learn the rules, you also have to learn the exceptions to the rules, learn new rules for those exceptions, AND learn when to follow which rule... I apologize to anyone trying to learn my language... 😅
i think im starting to become a fan of Phettbergs version. but that dtends to sound very droll
There is no need to address it thou? Though quite informative English video!
In a lot of cases you can work around using gendered forms though.
Some teachers are upset and frustrated cause they don't know how to write "hello dear colleagues".
Just say "hello" then, like, there's no need to extend that.
The only reason you feel the need to say more is "politeness" traditions codified by some guy named Knigge more than a hundred years ago, ditch it already.
Many people confuse biological sexualitiy with the language genders. Esp. people want to be "political correct".
addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/binnen-i-be-gone/ - Filtert Binnen-Is auf deutschsprachigen Webseiten ;)
it just shows how perfect the world that we live in really is. we have no other problems then squabble about semantics.
Rewboss does the reporting about semantics, and other channels report serious issues. Is there a problem with Rewboss discussing the semantic problem?
Neue Methode :
Te Mann
Te Frau
Te Kind
but what if people dont use these new forms because... I dont know, you cant force it by law and its inferior to our current language
In German, "De" would work better:
De Frau, De Mann, De Kind, allet Idioten, wa?
@@WeisserPaladin funtioniert doch perfekt ^^
@WeisserPaladin - like how Dutch has combined masculine & feminine to end up with common (although they still have neuter too)
Why not make life easier for everyone, and just use the diminutive in all cases (remove masculine and feminine grammatical genders from the language)?
That would immediately become the cutest language in the world :D
Do you really think the gender-crazies would accept "das Feuerwehrmännchen" as neutral?
The language would overflow with "chen" 😂🤣
Come to Franconia, here we already do so. We "diminutify" everything no matter what. 😀
or li, in Switzerland, if they haven't already got enough li's :p
I have to imagine it must be confusing dealing with people of alternative gender is or any type of transgender person. But you did this video incredibly well and you are awesome!
Well... The general public won't have a problem. But the law has. It is so hard and expensive to get the name changed here.
Meh, you can get used to it pretty quickly
Well... instead of "der Leher" or "die Lehrerin", they tend to just say "Lehrende" or in the case of the salesperson "Verkaufende" as a gender-neutral way.
Still a problem, der Lehrer is masculin like der Lehrende, same as der Verkäufer and der Verkaufende. The article is still der->maskulin. Lehrer=teacher, Lehrender=teaching person. Verkäufer= Salesman, der Verkaufende= the selling person. You see the nonsense in this discussion?
@@LarsEllerhorst no, not "Der Lehrende" (the man who teaches), "Die Lehrende" (the woman who teaches) or even "Das Lehrende" (the thing that is teaching, for example you learn something from a situation, a story or a mistake). But no, none of the above, but just "Lehrende" without anything, what kinda means "those who teach" and therefor is gender-neutral.
Same with Verkaufende, just without any article at all it means "those who sell" and like Lehrende is not tied to a specific gender.
Recently some radio stations - e.g. MDR or even Deutschlandfunk - started to use this massively annoying "Bürger...Innen". It is just messing up with language for no other reason than trying to make it right for a minority of people who is ready for feeling offended by everything. Next thing to come: Trigger warnings before reading the news...
And what exactly would be/is wrong with havin trigger warnings heading news?
I do suspect you do not know what trigger warnings are and which purpose they serve.
Wenn man sich mit der Entstehung des grammatischen Geschlechts auseinandersetzt, weiß man einfach, dass alles Geschrei um angebliche Diskriminierung falsch ist, da es immer nur auf Missverständnissen, Fehlschlüssen oder anderen Unwahrheiten beruht. Die Behauptung, das biologisch Männliche sei in der Sprache der Default, ist falsch. Die Kategorie Maskulinum heißt bloß Maskulinum, weil man auf dem ersten Blick meinte, hier eine Verbindung zum Sexus zu sehen. Daher bin ich dafür, statt von Maskulinum, Femininum und Neutrum, ab jetzt von Genus 1, Genus 2 und Genus 3 zu sprechen. Genus 1 ist der Default, weil es die Eigenschaft dieses Genus ist, Defaultableitungen darzustellen. Genus 2 ist ein spezifisches Genus, da es sich hier auf der Wortbildungsebene (ungleich der semantischen Ebene!) um Abstraktionen und Kollektivierungen handelt. Genus 3 ist das spezifische Genus für Resultatableitungen. (Alles stark vereinfacht.)
Das ist auch der Grund, warum es „der Computertomograph“ (die agierende Sache), „die Computertomographie“ (die Abstraktion) und „das Computertomogramm“ (das Resultat) heißt. Anderes Beispiel: Die Grabung (Abstraktion), das Grab (das Resultat) und, wenn das Graben morgen neuer Volkssport würde, „*der Grab“ (analog zu „der Tritt, Schlag, Fick...) („Ey, lass mal morgen auf einen Grab auf dem Acker treffen“).
„Lehrerin“ ist biologisch weiblich, Lehrer ist biologisch geschlechtsneutral. Lehrkraft hört sich für mich abwertend und menschenverachtend an (der Lehrer wird auf seine Lehr-Kraft reduziert; dann können wir auch gleich wieder von Menschenmaterial sprechen), wie NS-Sprache.
Ein Supraleiter ist auch maskulin und von der Wortbildung her gleich wie ein Lehrer.
„Bürgerinnen und Bürger“ ist mehrfach falsch. 1. weil es die oben genannte Logik des Genussystems verletzt, 2. weil es gegen das Gesetz der wachsenden Glieder verstößt (es muss „Bürger und Bürgerinnen“ heißen, das kürzere Glied zuerst!) und 3. weil es der Ikonizität widerspricht: das Bedeutungsärmere muss vor dem Bedeutungsreicheren stehen. „Bürger“ enthält keine biologische Geschlechtsinformation, „Bürgerin“ eben schon. Früher wurden Formulierungen wie „Bürger und Bürgerinnen“ aus gutem Grunde benutzt, weil man klar machen wollte, dass Frauen auch addressiert sind, weil sie es vorher noch nicht gewesen waren; etwa nach der Einführung des Frauenwahlrechtes konnte ein Redner „Bürger und Bürgerinnen“ sagen, weil er damit betonen wollte, dass Bürgerinnen auch Bürger und auch addressiert sind. Hier hatte die Phrase „Bürger und Bürgerinnen“ somit die Bedeutung „Bürger, auch Bürgerinnen“. Heute sollte man also wieder von „Bürgern“ sprechen.
Die Angelsachsen haben es genau andersherum gemacht und vollkommen richtig: die kürzere Variante wählen. Keine actress, keine waitress, keine ministress, sondern nur die vermeintlich männlichen Bezeichnungen. Aufs Deutsche bezogen: nur noch das generische Genus 1.
Dies ist kein Aufbäumen gegen Sprachwandel. Der ist mir sogar recht egal. Ich wehre mich gegen ideologische und emotionalisierte Instrumentalisierung von Sprache und Grammatik für irgendeine politische Agenda. Und ehrlich gesagt ist mir das Anliegen der Sprachgenderer völlig zweitrangig. Mir ist es egal, ob sie hehre Ziele haben oder nicht. Sie lügen und damit sind sie falsch. Soll doch die Welt verbrennen, doch verbrenne sie in den Flammen der Wahrheit. Besser als mit dem Saft der Lüge genährt zu wachsen.
The thing is, I think german words shouldn't be gendered at all. You should just, take the "masculine" and un-masculine the words that refer to people in general if you know what i mean...
How do you "un-masculine" a word?
Just a simple nerdy comment:
In Germanic languages (Not looking at you English you bizarre abomination that defies all that is good and right in this world by not being compatible with my argument) the male noun is the default and as far as I remember from reading a few articles and some Wikipedia entries there was no proper Neutrum in the old Germanic languages or Proto-Germanic languages in which there was a male version, the default, and a sort of Neutrum which was more or less also the female version. So in my mind (as a German who speaks German, neither Nederlands or the language complex of Denmark, Norway and Sweden) the correct (and yes in Germany we have a correct form of language which is called Hochdeutsch, which is used in official matters and is often preferred outside of family occasions, since everybody understands it and because it makes sense) way to use a Neutral noun would be to use the male noun since it is the default. I don't know how well this would work for other languages in the Germanic family, but it works perfectly well in German. The only problem I see is that of course every feminist on the planet would like to skin me alive for this statement and yes I agree that it is somewhat of a hot take, but I think that in Germany this would simply take some statements and a bit of adjusting and we would suddenly find ourselves with one less problem you would only have to take the step to not associate the Job title (in Germany we have many protected terms that define a field of work, a job, only if you have learned this occupation through official means are you allowed to advertise yourself as it) with the Person. In many ways we are already doing that, for example when describing a character in a novel who's gender should not be revealed one usually uses the male noun and when the only thing mentioned about a side character is its profession you also use the male noun. The breaking point here really is feminism, and I am not saying that feminism is bad as a movement or that activists are cultural terrorists who seek to destroy the German spirit, all I want to say is that George Orwell i still correct in the assumption that the way we talk, the language we use and the specific words given to ideas and things are crucial factors, if not necessarily the most crucial ones that define the different ways we think. Here I would like to make the argument that it would be better to just go with the most simple solution, that is informed by the study of the language instead of an agenda that tries to forcefully change the way we speak. The difference between: "Sie ist ein Lehrer" und " Sie ist eine Lehrerin" is only important when you have no pronoun in which case it would be "Die Person ist ein Lehrer", "Der Mensch ist ein Lehrer", "Ein Lehrer der Freien Waldorfschule Würzburg bekommt es nicht auf die Kette, seinen Hosenstall nach einem gemütlichen Toilettengang, von so circa 20 Minuten, vor dem Betreten des Klassenzimmers zu schließen", well yes, it would not be a perfect solution, but having every ten years a Humie telling you that you are sexist, because you put a / between Lehrer/in instead of a *, which, if I may be allowed to add a piece of simple primary school level education, is really annoying because this symbol has already a function and it is not to show that two terms are interchangeable or that two forms of a term are interchangeable, no, it is to mark the exact position of a footnote or other addition to a sentence or text. Damn plebs they have no right to ruin MY language, only I and a select group of cronies should be allowed to dictate how MY language should be spoken... Oh no I am starting to sound like the bloody Fränsch Äkädämä de Vron zu Arse or what ever they call it these days. You got mw do what ever you want id rather not understand my neighbour and go through two hundred pages of legalese to write every sentence that may or may not be seen by another human being, than speak vRanch.
If anything I said is factually wrong please correct me, but before you do, could you please take another second to just look it up on Wikipedia. Maybe you could even find it in your heart to link a link so that one might even think on reading up on it to learn a bit more and have a bit of context so that one might find it easier to fit that knowledge into one's existing frame of reference. Many thanks and the time you wasted on it will surely be repaid as (an?) extra piece of credit on your next job application. And if you have read all of this bullshit please seek professional help.
Tell that to the language police. They will arrest you and send you to a re-education camp.
Jetzt wird sogar schon die Fahrspur gegendert!!!1!
I like the hiccup part :) Never thought about that, but it is true.