Justice ministry’s edict that state institutions must use ‘gender-neutral’ language is forcing the country to confront change
Der, die or das? For centuries, the seemingly arbitrary allocation of masculine, feminine and neutral gender articles in German has driven non-native speakers to despair. “In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has,” the American writer Mark Twain once complained. “Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl.”
But hope may finally be in sight. Changing attitudes to gender are increasingly transforming the German language, and some theorists argue that scrapping the gendered articles altogether may be the most logical outcome.
Predictions vary: one suggestion is that Angela Merkel will eventually no longer be die Bundeskanzlerin but a neutral das Bundeskanzler, as she would be in English. Others believe that the feminine gender, already the most common fallback form used by non-native speakers, will become the default article: a policeman would no longer be der Polizist but die Polizist. More.
See: The Guardian
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немецкий => английский
Германия
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Well, to be fair it is necessary to mention their viewpoint: They argument that language forms thought, meaning that if we include the female gender it will lead to more women reaching positions that are now filled only by men. Although it seems that the Bundeskanzlerin didn't need any of this to reach her current position. ▲ Collapse
Испания
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However, I also don't see the problem with the English convention of using the masculine pronoun as the default when gender is not specified, so I may be biased.
Not at all, the boot is on the other foot. It's the people pursuing an ideologically-driven, non-linguistic politicised agenda that are biased on the issue, since they insist on conflating grammatical gender with perceived injustices in the "real world".
[Edited at 2014-04-01 09:13 GMT]
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The next step is rewriting literature into this "politically correct" language, then rewriting history, etc. They (whoever "they" are) are creating artificial problems so that they can pose as problem-solvers.
Франция
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language forms thought
well doesn't it? at least to a certain extent?
Германия
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language forms thought
well doesn't it? at least to a certain extent?
It does, to a certain extent. The question is whether that extent justifies butchering a whole language. I am sure there are less annoying ways to change people's minds.
[Edited at 2014-04-01 13:19 GMT]
Великобритания
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To me this kind of thing does feel a bit like trying to invent a problem to fit a solution rather than the other way round. But I guess the extent of the "problem" depends partly on whether to German speakers, a form such as "Studenten" really feels overtly "masculine", or whether most speakers simply interpret it as g... See more
To me this kind of thing does feel a bit like trying to invent a problem to fit a solution rather than the other way round. But I guess the extent of the "problem" depends partly on whether to German speakers, a form such as "Studenten" really feels overtly "masculine", or whether most speakers simply interpret it as gender-neutral without even thinking about it. And whichever the answer, I wonder if this tells us more about social attitude than it does about the language itself.
Just in case anybody had any doubt, in any case there's really little evidence that the entire German gender/article system/universe as we know it is going to break down over this. Where such a phenomenon has happened, such as the breakdown of the English Case system mentioned (or of course another well-studied instance is the breakdown of the Case system in Romance), it has really happened for different, across-the-board reasons, e.g. more general systemic changes that mean that certain endings are no longer phonetically "iconic" as marking a particular Case/gender etc(*).
When the author writes "Many linguists question whether...", this seems to be that tired old journalistic device of trying to pretend there's some kind of controversy when really there isn't. A more accurate statement would probably be: "99.99% of linguistics would think you were stark raving mad to suggest that..."
(*) So e.g. one more plausible factor that could affect the Case system in German, for example, would be the influx of foreign nouns with plurals in -s affecting how "iconic" -s is as a genitive marking.
[Edited at 2014-04-01 17:33 GMT] ▲ Collapse
Германия
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Well, to be fair it is necessary to mention their viewpoint: They argument that language forms thought, meaning that if we include the female gender it will lead to more women reaching positions that are now filled only by men. Although it seems that the Bundeskanzlerin didn't need any of this to reach her current position.
Interesting view, but I like your conclusion. I don't think the two are related, sadly.
Some languages just do not lend themselves to gender neutrality and trying to force this on German will just add additional and unecessary complexity (and give some Germans something new to complain about).
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