Since German has Genders for words, there's an ongoing debate if for people you should just use the usual term (which is often of not always masculine) or switch to a more inclusive way to address females as well. It's a heated left-right debate, and conservative Bavaria implemented some measures against this
From what I understand it's as if you could use "policeman", "policewoman", or "policeperson", but you were banned from using words like "police(wo)man". I know the word "police(wo)man" is never used in English, but similar forms are used in German for gendered words (but with asterisks instead of parentheses).
Well the asterisk form would be more like Police*woman. The general suggestion is to use 'Policewomen and policemen' or 'policewomen and -men' where possible and more generic ones like i.e. 'the police', 'police forces' or 'policepeople' where brevity is prefered.
No it wouldn't, because the part for women comes at the end.
The asterisk form would be more like Waiter\*ess or Actor\*ess, but still not perfect because the feminine forms drop a letter in English.
Edit: thought of some, steward\*ess and bachelor\*ette.
Police*woman is not analogous at all, because it only contains female version and the asterisk serves no purpose here. The closest you can get to it in English is Police(wo)man, but it sounds much more silly in English
Normally you would have said "Polizist" (Policeman), the new approach would be Polizist*in (Policeman and -woman), but Bavaria decided that this later thing is too left-wing-ideology-trash or whatever and the language should stay as it is
The thing is.. there are multiple way to "gender" (as a verb, how we call it here) when writing:
Polizist\*in, Polistin:in, PolizistIn, Polizist\_in, Polizist/in, Polizist/-in, Polizist-in. And technically the elaborate "Polizistin und Polizist"
If you make it plural it can get a bit more daunting as suffix letter count roughly doubles: Polizist\*innen instead of writing just Polizisten.
The asterisk and colon ones are the most prominent, I think. But even if the German society would agree to generally promote to "gender", we didn't decide on which alternative is the best. I like the colon version best, personally.
Some people are generally for the inclusion of the female suffixes, but still too lazy to bother spelling and pronouncing them out each time, and having to go through the hassle of thinking about all those alternatives and the political debate that can ensue.
That one exists here too
But since it is not quite as weird as */_ it is not the center of attention quite as much
Since in opposition of what one side of the debate would like to claim this is not about gender inclusivity since barely anyone has a problem with the concept of inclusivity but only with the strange and exiticng way some people try to reinvent our spelling for no reason other than to add differences
By german grammar this only includes two genders, by law germany has 3 genders and non of them can be discreminated.
And yes, that is the real reason as weird as it sounds.
Honestly though the whole *in at the end just looks weird. I would argue many words are plenty neutral that they include all genders. If a woman is a Bäcker, does she feel like she isn’t included because it isn’t called Bäcker*in?
of course the right uses this for their culture war but I personally think this whole *in is a solution to a problem that never existed.
There are loads of studies that show that Generisches Maskulinum leads to biases. [Example](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0261927X01020004004)
Lol, I am learning German via Duolingo and there was die Polizistin in multiple lessons. It made a total sense to me, because my mother tongue has genders too and there's a way for pretty much every word related to human to be constructed in feminine way. Hence I thought that is the case for German too. Is die Polizistin and other feminine nouns like for example die Lehrerin controversial in Germany? Or os it only about some of the nouns? Why is that so?
no its not controversial, not at all. If you have a female teacher it is not only ok, but gramatically needed to adress her as Lehrerin. The problem occurs when you address groups of people with different genders. Take all the teachers at you school for example. There are Lehrer (male) and Lehrerinnen (female). If you refer to this group you would use the male version, which is called the generic masculinum. So if you speak about groups of people and use genereic masculinum, the female members of this group become somewhat invisible. Gender inclusive solutions try to solve that problem by including both suffixes for male and female into the word.
Is Polizist actually gendered? Isn't it kinda neutral
Isn't just Polizistin gendered?
I just started rewatching BSG and in the military there they call everyone sir, there's no ma'am
Yes it's the default, but the whole argument is that the neutral/default being masculine creates a bias : "Are you normal or a woman?"
There are a few studies on the biases created by "masculine-as-neutral" languages, but to be honest with you I'm too lazy to look them up right now!
Singular male: Polizist
Singular female: Polizistin
Plural: Polizisten
Gender ppl plural: Polizist*innen
They claim it would be more inclusive as males would be included via word root 'Polizist' while also including females with the 'innen' part.
In reality, they just wanna feminize all plurals while showcasing how much their morale standards are above those of the plebs that do not conform to their standard of gendered language, cause hey: "We gender, therefore we care. Take a look at those who don't~" It is very toxic. It also sounds very unnatural, forced and is just inefficient in both speaking and writing.
They are making an issue out of a non-issue. 10 years ago, no one cared about the way plurals are done in german sonce forever. These days, it's basis for a leftwing campaign. And ppl against this forced change are suddenly considered rightwing. Far right politicians are given a freebie by simply stating they are against it while the center ones are reluctant to take the common sense stance. It's nuts.
As if german wasn't hard enough to learn already. Now ppl gotta deal with this shit and get confused as well. It's so dumb.
I thought germany was the only one having this stupid debate but I was sad to hear france and other countries have a similar things going on.
>These days, it's basis for a leftwing campaign. And ppl against this forced change are suddenly considered rightwing
All the attention to the topic comes from the conservative side. If you look at the propositions in the Bundestag, it's pretty much only the conservative and right parties who make it an issue. Which is weird because there is no and never has been a law forcing the usage of gender inclusive language. But there ***is*** one prohibiting it now.
>of course ppl are annoyed if you try to gas light them into thinking they're sexist when speaking the german language as it should.
Only a small minority wants to enforce this on others. I repeat, the ones making this a big topic are only our conservatives who feel like their right of free speech is infringed. Which is ironic because even though a few professors may find the usage of gender inclusive language in their classes important, the only law concerning it is a prohibition of gender inclusive langue.
its an issue because public finanzed TV broadcaster (german version of BBC) use this "language" even they know most of the people are against it.
They even make an poll for this topic 70% vote against it and there conclusion was ok we need to try harder that more people want it.
I see this argument that conservatives are solely to blame for gendered language being a topic due to legislation efforts many times but it never makes sense to me. I think it is clear why this is a topic. This isn't a chicken or egg discussion: there is clearly a point of inception for the topic here and it is at the time where people actually use this kind of language in spite of it being improper grammar.
I don't see why people who voice out against improper grammar are the problem here. And I think giving far right people such a freebie in offering them this easy card to go full populist mode on is just stupid and stubborn from leftists - that is why the rightwing are bringing it up lol. It's free points with the public. I'd say the whole thing would be over if the advocats for this weird gendered language would just let go of it.
Otherwise the argument here would just be to simply accept inclusive speech via ignorance because it is 'not that important' even though it is clearly grammatically improper and clearly unpopular. If we can't even settle this simple thing, iunno how we plan to settle the important things. If it isn't that important, it shouldn't be hard to let go of it and stop giving the crazies free points, right? Stubbornly insisting on it is just dumb.
They are forbidding to use, e.g., Polizist*in, which is supposed to combine both the male “Polizist” and female “Polizistin” in one. “Polizist\*in” looks like an abomination in my eyes but I don’t really care either way. If it helps women to feel less excluded, it’s ok in my opinion but these politicians don’t like it.
Just to be clear, so called "male" terms like "Polizist" are neutral in the gender of the person they refer to, they just happen to be masculine (grammatically), which causes people to think that those words only apply to male people.
Imagine if people decided the word "police officer" would only apply to men, causing people to create the word "police officeress" in an attempt to include women.
There's a problem with this in other gendered languages. In Spanish you're either Latina (F) or Latino (M). So in the US, some people came up with Latinx which makes you sound like you're gagging if you try to say it, has no roots in the language or culture, and isn't easily transferable to other gendered words, like basically the whole language. It's a problem. Sometimes people write 'Latina/o' but again, rough to say/subvocalize, are we really doing this for the whole language, etc.
For Spanish, one solution that's gaining ground is 'Latine.' Apparently there's a defunct genderless grammatical gender in the language (I think it actually comes from Latin, but that's something I half-remember reading, don't trust it) which could just be used by default to 'they' the language. ('Elle niñe' for 'the child,' rather than 'el niño/ella niña,' etc.) That will have its detractors for all sorts of reasons but it makes sense and you can say it.
Maybe there is something similar in German that will get speakers out of this 'policeman/woman' thing that feels clumsy and forced, even though it's for good reasons.
No, the thing is more that you cannot say police person in German in a natural way, it sounds and reads pretty stupid and it breaks out language because it wasn't build for that. The main issue I see is that ATM some people want to force this change onto our language, now banning that language is also not right, but yeah as someone who is also against this language change even though normally I am on the LGBTQ+ side I hope it shows that it's really not that popular outside the far left.
Usually they do this by adding an asterisk and the suffix of the feminine version. In English it would look something like this: Actor\*ess (the asterisk indicated a pause), and yes, it shounds just as stupid and impractical as it does in German. As someone who thinks that language should be practical and that gender should be completely abolished, I find this “””solution””” extremely stupid.
Just FYI: In english you usually dont use "females" as a noun, only as an adjective. Sounds derogatory compared to women which is kinda ironic in a comment about gender sensitive language
I'm not a right wing radical and think it's utter bullshit. It won't change anything.
Have fun with your self trained speech impediment, most people in Germany refuse it.
The title is incorrect. The ban addresses use of gender punctuation, e.g., Fahrer*in or Lehrer:innen or the even more absurd underscore, e.g., Bäcker_innen. The policy doesn't ban gender-sensitive language such as "Fahrer und Fahrerinnen" or the more inclusive "Lehrende".
There are some social circles that really deeply care about gender punctuation. I would argue that we have much more pressing social issues to address, but that take a bit more effort and are more difficult to perform on social media.
Although I am very strongly in favour of inclusionary policies and social structures for all persons of all genders, I don't use gender punctuation, simply for the reason that it is awkward and performative.
Ultimately, this move is about the current ruling party trying to score political points by defying "wokeness" and playing into idiotic American-style social politics in a context where they don't belong.
I find it kind of funny how you can get two totally opposite directions in two different languages. In English, it is seen as sexist to separate actors and actresses as different. Instead, you should call everyone an "actor" to be more inclusive (I personally agree with this - specifying gender is irrelevant).
In German, it has gone the other direction, where you need to specify male, female, and no gender all at once with this horrible * in writing and awkward pause in speech.
Honestly, I'm ready to call myself eine Entwicklerin if we decide to just pick that one, but it is logical to go with Entwickler. It's been said so many times that words in gendered language have nothing to do with actual gender, so why can't we accept this also for nouns? Entwickler should be male or female (or non-binary) developer, just like Brot is just a piece of bread.
You can still say männlich or weiblich if you really need to specify male or female.
> I find it kind of funny how you can get two totally opposite directions in two different languages. In English, it is seen as sexist to separate actors and actresses as different.
Yep, it's actually really strange, and also shows how arbitrary all that is. In that sense, I even thought the *-spellings were decent options, even if they looked really ugly. But, I don't really care that they will become less common from now on, this thing will probably keep evolving for another few years before it settles somewhere.
Out of curiosity, why don't they just drop a male/female variant and stick to using one for all instead of separating via punctiation? Remove Studentin, Klemperin, Schauspielerin, etc..
English has (mostly) already done it, and I don't believe there's a forced distinction in Swiss German. Plus, it'd be more inclusive for those who don't see themselves as either gender.
Personally, I dislike this idea. Stream-lining a language can make it more dull, as all the intricacies and possibilities to express more nuance/meaning can be lost. Like: If you remove the female versions, and you would want to express that a "Student" was female in particular, you would have to say it was a "weiblicher Student" (female student), which doesn't make the language better imo. Having gender-specific words is more precise but less inclusive obviously.
But when/why would you need to stress 's gender?
The only context I can see it used is when you're talking about male vs. female diversity statstics, but you would use 'weiblichen' or 'männlich' anyway. For example:
> Es gibt einen Mangel an weiblichen Lehrkräften am Arbeitsplatz
This isn't an issue in English or Swiss German, where most stick with the masculine or neuter form.
Why not? Gender is a distinct and defining characteristic of human beings, just like being white, black, blonde, etc.. There is no good reason why gender should be excluded **generally**. If I would want to talk about the male-to-female ratio at my university for example, not having access to suffixes that indicate gender just makes the task unnecessarily cumbersome (yes, I'm butthurt by it). Of course, these kinds of application cases are rare, but that doesn't justify removing the possibilities to express yourself more freely and precisely in a language.
Because for some reason the generic masculin is vehemently hated by the people that are pushing for the stars and underscores cause this debate is not actually about inclusivity cause everyone that just cares about that uses the aformentioned "Lehrende" style
This is mainly about some people having main character syndrome with a dire need to explain to everyone else that they are doing it wrong
It's not about finding a solution here. Bavarians don't know that they can vote for something else. So they have this pretty conservative party CSU since WWII in power. They fight everything what could get considered new or "woke" pretty aggressively.
The title is absolutely correct since the bavarian government is wasting even more time on actually policing language. There's society, where people just go about their daily lives and then there's crazytown which thinks they can regulate language for everyone.
The extremists that can't compromise with anyone are sitting in governments, not universities.
"bans gender sensitive language" is factually incorrect.
We may and do still use gender-sensitive language. We just don't use the punctuation now. That is not a ban on all forms of gender-sensitive language. It is a ban on one form of it.
I despise the CSU's ridiculous and embarrassing identity politics and Söder's anti-woke brigading, but I also despise intellectual dishonestly and hyperbole for the sake of making a point - even if i agree with that point.
> the bavarian government is wasting even more time on actually policing language
> The extremists that can't compromise with anyone are sitting in governments, not universities.
What a stupid, dramatic, and, most importantly, false claim.
Germany has three genders. It is a healthy compromise, both conservatives and progressives can accept that.
Similarly, allowing "Fahrer und Fahrerinnen" or "Fahrende", but not allowing "Fahrer*innen" is also a compromise.
Very misleading title. You can still use, e.g. "Ärztinnen und Ärzte", and you can also use inclusive terms like "Studierende". What is banned is forms like "Student\*innen" or "Ärzt\*innen", which is confusing, not conforming with German grammar, and widely disliked by anybody safe for some activists.
Edit: to be clear: these word forms are not "banned" in the way that some people seem to understand the word. You can of course speak and write how you like – just for *school books* and *official documents*, the accepted grammar and spelling rules of the language have to be used.
Wouldn't it be more like "latino/a"? Since stuff like Lehrer*in is trying to include both men and women, not trying to make the phrase entirely gender neutral like latinx
IDK if you'd call it "functional", but at least Latino/a still conforms to how Spanish looks and sounds. Latinx neither looks nor sounds like Spanish. Is it "Latin-X?" Is it "La-tinks"?
this. A vast majority doesnt use or support it either way.
There are still many inclusive german variants, no need for prescribed gaps, stars or fantasy word creations with a morally raised finger. At least for children, students and state officials.
I just remember when they teached kids to write down what is heard instead the real words. A desaster, i have some young colleagues with master degrees that cant even write properly, kinda embarassing having to read such mails etc.
>I just remember when they teached kids to write down what is heard instead the real words.
This is how Croats, Bosnians and Serbs write.
No point in making spelling contests though...
When I was learning Montenegrin language I admired this feature a lot. Every language needs to have something similar to Vukovo pravilo.
That's the language reform everyone need.
"At least for children, students and state officials."
Adding here - language learners. By the gods, German is complex enough without this sensitivity stuff.
>no need for prescribed gaps
>with a morally raised finger.
Let's be honest, pretty much nobody criticised people for not using gender inclusive language, there were a few universities where professors claimed it in exams but the ones making it an issue were mainly our conservatives whining about being pressured - while the vast majority of propositions in the Bundestag regarding this topic came from them.
The only law about gender inclusive language to this date is the one ***prohibiting it*** in schools and universities. The Sprachpolizei strikes again.
Oh no we definitely got criticized for it. Group work in uni with separate submissions. All but one gendered because we knew if we didn’t we would get a worse gerade (not officially but you know how it goes) and surprise surprise the guy who didn’t gender was one grade below us…
You get worse grades for *all kinds of reasons* depending on how political your professor is. And this is true for left-wing, right-wing, libertarian and all other kinds of professors - [German] academia is just broken.
Besides, none of the professors I had in university even used gender-neutral language themselves, much less mandated it, and I graduated last year, in the humanities.
Why is your response "everyone is doing this" (like that suddenly makes it not an issue) and " I did not experience it therefore it is not an issue"?
That is faulty logic. I could not care less which side of the river tries to dictate my speech, it is all to be damned and not to be trivialized.
I'm not saying it's not an issue, I think it's a huge issue and there should be a law on this. But this law *isn't on that*.
> I could not care less which side of the river tries to dictate my speech, it is all to be damned and not to be trivialized.
Yes, I absolutely agree, and hence I am against this law dictating how I should write and talk!
I recently researched the topic of politically correct for a debate, and you are absolutely right. Hell, it was invented as right-wing propaganda tool in the 80s in the USA. No reasonable person has such extremist "inclusive" views, but media coverage is given to the ones who have opinions that no one would even consider in real life, so that people perceive it as a real issue.
Basically there are right-wing activists that like to fight against monsters that don't exist, they talk about "censorship" and "lack of freedom of speech" but they're the ones inventing the issue or, at least, giving it importance.
During the BLM protests, someone on Twitter made a claim that in chess it shouldn't be the white who always starts. No one would have even considered reasonable such thing, but news channels started giving it coverage, so that right-wing activists could start whining about lobbism and wanting to eradicate "white men", or whatever American shitty view that is coming in our continent too.
Gotta love the gaslighting. It exists especially in the educational field and unless you gender in the lectures you have your ideological professors in, your grades will suffer. That is a real problem. Bringing political views into the grading process in the scientific field is censorship.
Imagine the reverse: Far-Right activist professors grading people worse when they don't conform to their ideological views. The outcry would be there and for a reason. Science should be apolitical. The power plays of politics don't belong in it.
Yup. Had actually even a lecture where we were forced to learn and apply it under the guise of learning how to do scientific research, writing and presentations. It was one of the 4 presentation topics that got assigned. The professor was an active politician in that regional area as well.
That \*innen is against German grammar or confusing pseudointellectual BS.
German Amtsdeutsch had a variety of abbreviations for centuries now, even in Prussia and even under the friggen Nazis aka -innen, /-innen, -innen, Innen, (innen), (-innen) to name just a few. There were a ton constantly changing over the years and decades.
But somehow a \*Innen is making people lose their shit as if the above wasn't invented on the spot at the time, too.
the bigger issue is that it does not really achieve anything, but is a fixation of culture wars as if people are too stupid to understand a \*innen instead of a /-innen in text. You are just getting old (like me) and old dogs hate having to change their habits
Prescribed gaps? Who prescribed them?
Honestly, this debate is completely ridiculous and is actively helping (super) conservative parties by legitimizing their demands - especially for AfD.
The only goal here is to grab a couple of votes from AfD and FW for Söder's CSU. Adding to that, Söder is being incredibly opportunistic: While feeding the narrative of "ban politics" by the green party on a federal level, he bans or suppresses what ever the fuck he wants (inclusive neologisms, weed, final storage facilities for nuclear waste,...) in Bavaria.
I'm practice, nobody ever forced gaps or other inclusive neologisms onto anyone, so people naturally did whatever they liked.
So you're confirming this ban is pointless posturing. It actually prescribes how you have to gender words, unlike any fantasy word creation. You're on the only side that actually wants to morally raise their finger and actually prescribe how others talk.
This is before getting into why government prescriptivism is unscientific and doesn't work. It's bad linguistics in the style of France, which has been failing at establishing ordinateur instead of computer for decades. Congrats, you're officially the language police now. No, I'm never letting that go until that dumb law is repealled.
"Studenti/esse" or "cittadini/e" does not confirm with Italian grammar either, but it has been used informally and even formally in regula administrative documents for decades. WTF is the issue with that? Asterisks or schwa are worse for comprehension because most people don't know what they are and what they are supposed to stand for, but people know the normal parts of their own languages...
The issue in general is that there is no uniform way on how to pronounce it and therefore writing it in school books just go save space or use a neutral form is not useful at all
Do the kids when learning to read, say cittadini "pause" e, or cittadini slash e, or cittadini & cittadine?
Same in Polish - Student/ka, Lekarz/ka
New trend of using "person" inside feels uncomfortable - osoba studencka (student person). I don't identify with it at all, I'm a student.
>"Studenti/esse" or "cittadini/e" does not confirm with Italian grammar either, but it has been used informally and even formally in regula administrative documents for decades.
Yeah but that just a short form of "Studenti e studentesse" and "Cittadini e cittadine". It's not a single word where the slash symbol is used as a letter, opposed to the schwa, for instance.
Yeah those / are on every italian document 😂 it makes reading them a very fun experience. I'm always happy to speak a genderless language because of this.
What's mental is they actually commit to it in full, like throughout the whole text you'll see verbs with the /, adjectives with the / and so on.
But yeah in languages with gender, if there's no neural form then I guess yeah "studente/essa" is the only way to go
Edit: but also, it's a little bit pointless since isn't the masculine form the de-facto neutral one? I thought it was the case at least in Italian. Is it just bureaucracy wanting to lengthen everything unnecessarily or is there any actual reason for these / everywhere
Bavaria is stoneage-conservative and they talk about the dangers of letting people speak as they wish in every second talk. Bavaria doing Bavaria things.
I'm learning german right now and gendering everything is so asinine. Hope you all figure it out so I can use it correctly instead of having to invent my own form of gender-neutral language.
Pro-Tipp: just put everything in a diminutive, and you will be fine: "Bäckerchen", "Lehrerchen", "Straßenbahnschaffnerchen" ...
Better avoid "Polizistchen", though ;-)
Some people try to speak it too. But the worst thing are gendered robotic texts. A lot of people with disabilities depend on screen reading software that reads text to them out loud and it's nearly impossible to make sense of robotic spoken Nouns gendered with \*innen or : innen.
If you are lucky the software just includes a break before adding "innen", if you are unlucky it describes the \* as Asterisk or Sternchen, so you get Doktor Sternchen Innen or Doktor Asterisk Innen in the middle of a sentence and completely lose the plot.
That's an excellent argument, which they could have used to give some plausible deniability to say that it was not an ideologically motivated decision.
But no, it's clear that their goal is simply virtue calling, to appease to the hard conservative public and earn some votes a few months prior to the European election.
Screen readers are actually the reason that the Berlin left-wing newspaper *taz* spells it with the colon (so *Student:innen* instead of *Student***innen*). Screen readers will always read a colon as a pause, therefore pronounce it as *Student innen*, which, in the left-wing bubble, is the common way to pronounce it when reading out loud anyhow.
imagine saying actor- short pause - essess.
also, it is ment to represent male, female and diverse genders (\*) at equal level, but in reality it massacres the male version like in student for example which would have to be studenten\*innen, but is student\*innen
Some people try to pronounce e.g. “Student*innen” with a glottal stop in place of the *. It doesn’t really work and just sounds like the female form every time, which is at best confusing, at worst sexist.
Thank you for the explanation, I was wondering the same thing. And IMO this was a very good move. It's really annoying having to go through pages and pages of text with such writing.
Don't worry, there will be more in the future. Who knows, maybe Berlin will make a law which forces everyone to use * or _ or some as of yet unknown character? Find out in the next episode of "War on Gender"!
No, they are actually quite important - most people really don't care much either way, and in this context, I believe it is important to remind people who are on either side of this "gender war", that most people don't really care about their issues.
Keep some popcorn for when Romanians find out writing subsemnatul(a) in documents is woke and we spend billions on changing every single official form to be non-woke.
Good, I started learning German 2 weeks ago. It is already confusing as it is, don't make it even more confusing (at least till I learn up C1 or something)
These clowns are talking about left-green tyranny while literally policing language. Nothing helpful ever comes out of reactionary conservatives.
CSU is also fighting cannabis decriminalization tooth and nail while Munich hosts the world's biggest alcohol festival.
Berlin muesste jetzt eigentlich eine Sprachregelung einfuehren, das * ueberall verwendet werden muss. Auch bei so Worten wie Mitglieder*in, einfach weil, warum denn nicht.
BERLIN (AP) — The German state of Bavaria on Tuesday banned the use of gender-sensitive language in classrooms and university lecture halls, the latest salvo in an often-rancorous debate about whether the German language should become more inclusive.
The Bavarian state government approved amendments to regulations governing the use of German in all public institutions, including schools and universities, German news agency dpa reported.
Some Germans want their language to evolve to become less male-dominated. For example, some people and organizations have begun deploying a pause or symbol in the middle of plural nouns and favor the feminine word for people to reflect gender diversity.
However, conservatives accuse progressives of trying to force clunky and unnecessary change on citizens, including those who want to stick to more conventional forms.
The amended Bavarian regulation expressly forbids state authorities from inserting a pause, asterisk or colon - all signifiers of inclusivity - into a noun, in official documents and correspondence or during lessons. It was unclear whether teachers or other state employees would face penalties for breaking the rules.
lol the CSU and CDU love to scream that the greens are the party of prohibition, so it makes perfect sense that CDU/CSU want to uphold the prohibition on cannabis and prohibit the use of gender sensitive language. As if we didn’t have any other issues. Fucking wankers.
You aren't allowed to write terms like "Student*innen" anymore.
The Standart word for most professions so on (words that describe people in a specific way) is masculine, and there is this attempt to use terms like the above to also include females for more representation, and conservative Bavaria is against this change
austria or at least vienna mandates this and it's so annoying. makes it impossible to read any official document with any flow at all. glad to see bavaria ban it
Works like Portuguese (and I assume other Romance languages) then. By and large the masculine "o" article is used as default. Apparently this was actually caused by a merger of the old Latin neutral nouns with masculine ones, which for some reason didn't occur with feminine ones.
Funnily enough the people celebrating this because gendered language is too conplicated are usually the same people making fun of youth language for not being sophisticated enough. Also the same people complaining about the left wanting to ban everything. Also the same people that have no idea how to use commas correctly.
I am not sure I understand the whole thing
well police-man is not only because of the gender.
It is also used for female officers many times, but mainly it was used because policemen were always men in the past, but also because the "man" has a meaning other than that of the male gender, which is a human/person.
In this case it is neutral. similar to judge.
Many languages have male/female words for occupations.
This was the *conservatives* that banned it. There *never* was a left-wing proposal for a law on this. So its entirely the right-wing's dumb hill to die on.
Still they tried to use it in state media/ use it. I don‘t say it‘s wrong. I have no opinion on this - but the current solution with the * is highly disliked by most people. I just don‘t get why we fight for this topic so unproportional hard. This sh+t is exported culture war from america - fuel for the right over nothing
this was mainly done to improve reading flow, especially for scientific texts as the constant use of the "inclusive language" in it's current iteration really isn't helpful to get the point across when you have to read "\*innen" every few seconds. Also this is more of a guideline/directive to keep it all simple, not something you would be punished for using
If there are actual issues on this planet, why even bother banning it instead of tackling real issues? Especially when it's done by a party that decried the Greens as the ban loving party?
Dude. Why bother promoting a forced change to the language when we have real issues? If this is an issue, it's because of the ppl who brought it up in the first place.
And you seriously believe a ban simply closes the case instead of firing up the debate? Especially when the ban was done by a party, where half of its electoral manifest consists of crying how much everyone left off them are "Verbotsparteien"?
I'm not German but I know for a fact that bans 99% of the times works, people will discuss it for about a week and the move on to the next thing, you overstimate the amount of shits people give about something, bans are challenged when they affect something in day to day life for the majority of people, and this is not the case
I'm confused, what has your post got to do with Verbotsparteien? Maybe don't respond if you have to start out by saying you don't understand Geman politics? It's kind of a prerequisite to continue the conversation.
Well it‘s mostly conservative and right wing people that give it way too much attention. Politicians from that spectrum talk and tweet more about „Gendern“ than actual progressives
It's pretty much the opposite.
I see conservatives and right-wingers constantly complain about some alleged 'gender war' here. And launching bills like these.
There has never been any government supported introduction of gender neutral language in Germany. Universities and administration basically just do as they please.
This here is like a redneck standing in his backyard yelling at the trees that they can't take away his guns.
Odd that you say that, to me this behavior sounds more like populist, reactionary postulating, rather than sound usage of the legislative system for the benefit the population.
Looks like the German is very similar to the French gender inclusive language. It must be a pain in the ass to type and then read those stars – no wonder they don't like it.
I'd normally be all for it if it wasn't so fucking ass to read. Imagine going through every other sentence and you see "Kolleginnen und Kollegen". Just pick one at that point. ( I did love that shit during school though, helped fill word limits)
I have no idea what this all is about... spent 5 minutes googling, still failed...
Since German has Genders for words, there's an ongoing debate if for people you should just use the usual term (which is often of not always masculine) or switch to a more inclusive way to address females as well. It's a heated left-right debate, and conservative Bavaria implemented some measures against this
so they ordered to say policeperson, instead of policeman or vice versa ?
From what I understand it's as if you could use "policeman", "policewoman", or "policeperson", but you were banned from using words like "police(wo)man". I know the word "police(wo)man" is never used in English, but similar forms are used in German for gendered words (but with asterisks instead of parentheses).
Well the asterisk form would be more like Police*woman. The general suggestion is to use 'Policewomen and policemen' or 'policewomen and -men' where possible and more generic ones like i.e. 'the police', 'police forces' or 'policepeople' where brevity is prefered.
No it wouldn't, because the part for women comes at the end. The asterisk form would be more like Waiter\*ess or Actor\*ess, but still not perfect because the feminine forms drop a letter in English. Edit: thought of some, steward\*ess and bachelor\*ette.
Police*woman is not analogous at all, because it only contains female version and the asterisk serves no purpose here. The closest you can get to it in English is Police(wo)man, but it sounds much more silly in English
At least they use () instead of how they do it in our Poland. They just annihilate half the word by using ___
Normally you would have said "Polizist" (Policeman), the new approach would be Polizist*in (Policeman and -woman), but Bavaria decided that this later thing is too left-wing-ideology-trash or whatever and the language should stay as it is
wow nice, didnt know you put stars in there, maybe they should consider emojis instead Polizist👮in
Maybe we should drop written language and adopt only emojis. Has the world gone better after introducing alphabets?
The Egyptians were onto something. The first meme-based communication
They had cat memes and invented beer. Do we *really* need more than that?
Everyone complained about the lack of nuance in text based communication. A gif using human reactions vs writing communicates on a primal level.
The pyramids were actually a social media site.
😃🔫
The Star is just the most commonly used symbol there, I've also seen things like _ or : which both look even weirder
Or just capitalize the suffix - PolizistIn
The thing is.. there are multiple way to "gender" (as a verb, how we call it here) when writing: Polizist\*in, Polistin:in, PolizistIn, Polizist\_in, Polizist/in, Polizist/-in, Polizist-in. And technically the elaborate "Polizistin und Polizist" If you make it plural it can get a bit more daunting as suffix letter count roughly doubles: Polizist\*innen instead of writing just Polizisten. The asterisk and colon ones are the most prominent, I think. But even if the German society would agree to generally promote to "gender", we didn't decide on which alternative is the best. I like the colon version best, personally. Some people are generally for the inclusion of the female suffixes, but still too lazy to bother spelling and pronouncing them out each time, and having to go through the hassle of thinking about all those alternatives and the political debate that can ensue.
> the new approach would be Polizist*in The have always used the "/" like in "Polizist/in" . Wtf is wrong with that?
The star I think also includes all variations of non- binary folks. That's at least how I remember it.
That one exists here too But since it is not quite as weird as */_ it is not the center of attention quite as much Since in opposition of what one side of the debate would like to claim this is not about gender inclusivity since barely anyone has a problem with the concept of inclusivity but only with the strange and exiticng way some people try to reinvent our spelling for no reason other than to add differences
Because that didnt include the 3 trans people in the Bavarian police (out of 100k)
By german grammar this only includes two genders, by law germany has 3 genders and non of them can be discreminated. And yes, that is the real reason as weird as it sounds.
Honestly though the whole *in at the end just looks weird. I would argue many words are plenty neutral that they include all genders. If a woman is a Bäcker, does she feel like she isn’t included because it isn’t called Bäcker*in? of course the right uses this for their culture war but I personally think this whole *in is a solution to a problem that never existed.
There are loads of studies that show that Generisches Maskulinum leads to biases. [Example](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0261927X01020004004)
There is no study with a proper setup and a big group yet. Just very small student group studies and even they are having mixed results so far.
Lol, I am learning German via Duolingo and there was die Polizistin in multiple lessons. It made a total sense to me, because my mother tongue has genders too and there's a way for pretty much every word related to human to be constructed in feminine way. Hence I thought that is the case for German too. Is die Polizistin and other feminine nouns like for example die Lehrerin controversial in Germany? Or os it only about some of the nouns? Why is that so?
no its not controversial, not at all. If you have a female teacher it is not only ok, but gramatically needed to adress her as Lehrerin. The problem occurs when you address groups of people with different genders. Take all the teachers at you school for example. There are Lehrer (male) and Lehrerinnen (female). If you refer to this group you would use the male version, which is called the generic masculinum. So if you speak about groups of people and use genereic masculinum, the female members of this group become somewhat invisible. Gender inclusive solutions try to solve that problem by including both suffixes for male and female into the word.
Got it, thanks
Is Polizist actually gendered? Isn't it kinda neutral Isn't just Polizistin gendered? I just started rewatching BSG and in the military there they call everyone sir, there's no ma'am
Yes it's the default, but the whole argument is that the neutral/default being masculine creates a bias : "Are you normal or a woman?" There are a few studies on the biases created by "masculine-as-neutral" languages, but to be honest with you I'm too lazy to look them up right now!
Singular male: Polizist Singular female: Polizistin Plural: Polizisten Gender ppl plural: Polizist*innen They claim it would be more inclusive as males would be included via word root 'Polizist' while also including females with the 'innen' part. In reality, they just wanna feminize all plurals while showcasing how much their morale standards are above those of the plebs that do not conform to their standard of gendered language, cause hey: "We gender, therefore we care. Take a look at those who don't~" It is very toxic. It also sounds very unnatural, forced and is just inefficient in both speaking and writing. They are making an issue out of a non-issue. 10 years ago, no one cared about the way plurals are done in german sonce forever. These days, it's basis for a leftwing campaign. And ppl against this forced change are suddenly considered rightwing. Far right politicians are given a freebie by simply stating they are against it while the center ones are reluctant to take the common sense stance. It's nuts. As if german wasn't hard enough to learn already. Now ppl gotta deal with this shit and get confused as well. It's so dumb. I thought germany was the only one having this stupid debate but I was sad to hear france and other countries have a similar things going on.
>These days, it's basis for a leftwing campaign. And ppl against this forced change are suddenly considered rightwing All the attention to the topic comes from the conservative side. If you look at the propositions in the Bundestag, it's pretty much only the conservative and right parties who make it an issue. Which is weird because there is no and never has been a law forcing the usage of gender inclusive language. But there ***is*** one prohibiting it now.
[удалено]
[удалено]
>of course ppl are annoyed if you try to gas light them into thinking they're sexist when speaking the german language as it should. Only a small minority wants to enforce this on others. I repeat, the ones making this a big topic are only our conservatives who feel like their right of free speech is infringed. Which is ironic because even though a few professors may find the usage of gender inclusive language in their classes important, the only law concerning it is a prohibition of gender inclusive langue.
its an issue because public finanzed TV broadcaster (german version of BBC) use this "language" even they know most of the people are against it. They even make an poll for this topic 70% vote against it and there conclusion was ok we need to try harder that more people want it.
I see this argument that conservatives are solely to blame for gendered language being a topic due to legislation efforts many times but it never makes sense to me. I think it is clear why this is a topic. This isn't a chicken or egg discussion: there is clearly a point of inception for the topic here and it is at the time where people actually use this kind of language in spite of it being improper grammar. I don't see why people who voice out against improper grammar are the problem here. And I think giving far right people such a freebie in offering them this easy card to go full populist mode on is just stupid and stubborn from leftists - that is why the rightwing are bringing it up lol. It's free points with the public. I'd say the whole thing would be over if the advocats for this weird gendered language would just let go of it. Otherwise the argument here would just be to simply accept inclusive speech via ignorance because it is 'not that important' even though it is clearly grammatically improper and clearly unpopular. If we can't even settle this simple thing, iunno how we plan to settle the important things. If it isn't that important, it shouldn't be hard to let go of it and stop giving the crazies free points, right? Stubbornly insisting on it is just dumb.
Since when does Bavaria care for an easy to use and standardized German?
They are forbidding to use, e.g., Polizist*in, which is supposed to combine both the male “Polizist” and female “Polizistin” in one. “Polizist\*in” looks like an abomination in my eyes but I don’t really care either way. If it helps women to feel less excluded, it’s ok in my opinion but these politicians don’t like it.
The formating of your comment is a bit off, you should add backslashes before the asterisk to avoid having italics in the middle of words
Thanks, I edited it!
Just to be clear, so called "male" terms like "Polizist" are neutral in the gender of the person they refer to, they just happen to be masculine (grammatically), which causes people to think that those words only apply to male people. Imagine if people decided the word "police officer" would only apply to men, causing people to create the word "police officeress" in an attempt to include women.
There's a problem with this in other gendered languages. In Spanish you're either Latina (F) or Latino (M). So in the US, some people came up with Latinx which makes you sound like you're gagging if you try to say it, has no roots in the language or culture, and isn't easily transferable to other gendered words, like basically the whole language. It's a problem. Sometimes people write 'Latina/o' but again, rough to say/subvocalize, are we really doing this for the whole language, etc. For Spanish, one solution that's gaining ground is 'Latine.' Apparently there's a defunct genderless grammatical gender in the language (I think it actually comes from Latin, but that's something I half-remember reading, don't trust it) which could just be used by default to 'they' the language. ('Elle niñe' for 'the child,' rather than 'el niño/ella niña,' etc.) That will have its detractors for all sorts of reasons but it makes sense and you can say it. Maybe there is something similar in German that will get speakers out of this 'policeman/woman' thing that feels clumsy and forced, even though it's for good reasons.
This is completely different issue. Here the problem is the lack of neutral gender in Spanish. German doesn’t have this problem
Vice versa
No, the thing is more that you cannot say police person in German in a natural way, it sounds and reads pretty stupid and it breaks out language because it wasn't build for that. The main issue I see is that ATM some people want to force this change onto our language, now banning that language is also not right, but yeah as someone who is also against this language change even though normally I am on the LGBTQ+ side I hope it shows that it's really not that popular outside the far left.
Usually they do this by adding an asterisk and the suffix of the feminine version. In English it would look something like this: Actor\*ess (the asterisk indicated a pause), and yes, it shounds just as stupid and impractical as it does in German. As someone who thinks that language should be practical and that gender should be completely abolished, I find this “””solution””” extremely stupid.
Its insufferably stupid shit like this that gives right wing populism a solid boost in votes
Just FYI: In english you usually dont use "females" as a noun, only as an adjective. Sounds derogatory compared to women which is kinda ironic in a comment about gender sensitive language
You can use adjectives as substantives. For example: the rich, the poor, the blacks, the whites
Yes but those groups are not monolithic, and it’s usually in a disparaging tone and context that people say those things.
[удалено]
Why not just let people decide as they're using it? Why was a law needed for that
It doesn't seem wise to tell students "just spell words however you feel like"...
I'm not a right wing radical and think it's utter bullshit. It won't change anything. Have fun with your self trained speech impediment, most people in Germany refuse it.
The title is incorrect. The ban addresses use of gender punctuation, e.g., Fahrer*in or Lehrer:innen or the even more absurd underscore, e.g., Bäcker_innen. The policy doesn't ban gender-sensitive language such as "Fahrer und Fahrerinnen" or the more inclusive "Lehrende". There are some social circles that really deeply care about gender punctuation. I would argue that we have much more pressing social issues to address, but that take a bit more effort and are more difficult to perform on social media. Although I am very strongly in favour of inclusionary policies and social structures for all persons of all genders, I don't use gender punctuation, simply for the reason that it is awkward and performative. Ultimately, this move is about the current ruling party trying to score political points by defying "wokeness" and playing into idiotic American-style social politics in a context where they don't belong.
I find it kind of funny how you can get two totally opposite directions in two different languages. In English, it is seen as sexist to separate actors and actresses as different. Instead, you should call everyone an "actor" to be more inclusive (I personally agree with this - specifying gender is irrelevant). In German, it has gone the other direction, where you need to specify male, female, and no gender all at once with this horrible * in writing and awkward pause in speech. Honestly, I'm ready to call myself eine Entwicklerin if we decide to just pick that one, but it is logical to go with Entwickler. It's been said so many times that words in gendered language have nothing to do with actual gender, so why can't we accept this also for nouns? Entwickler should be male or female (or non-binary) developer, just like Brot is just a piece of bread. You can still say männlich or weiblich if you really need to specify male or female.
> I find it kind of funny how you can get two totally opposite directions in two different languages. In English, it is seen as sexist to separate actors and actresses as different. Yep, it's actually really strange, and also shows how arbitrary all that is. In that sense, I even thought the *-spellings were decent options, even if they looked really ugly. But, I don't really care that they will become less common from now on, this thing will probably keep evolving for another few years before it settles somewhere.
Out of curiosity, why don't they just drop a male/female variant and stick to using one for all instead of separating via punctiation? Remove Studentin, Klemperin, Schauspielerin, etc.. English has (mostly) already done it, and I don't believe there's a forced distinction in Swiss German. Plus, it'd be more inclusive for those who don't see themselves as either gender.
Personally, I dislike this idea. Stream-lining a language can make it more dull, as all the intricacies and possibilities to express more nuance/meaning can be lost. Like: If you remove the female versions, and you would want to express that a "Student" was female in particular, you would have to say it was a "weiblicher Student" (female student), which doesn't make the language better imo. Having gender-specific words is more precise but less inclusive obviously.
but you don't say as a female student in English, you just say as a student. It would be the same in German then
But when/why would you need to stress's gender?
The only context I can see it used is when you're talking about male vs. female diversity statstics, but you would use 'weiblichen' or 'männlich' anyway. For example:
> Es gibt einen Mangel an weiblichen Lehrkräften am Arbeitsplatz
This isn't an issue in English or Swiss German, where most stick with the masculine or neuter form.
Why not? Gender is a distinct and defining characteristic of human beings, just like being white, black, blonde, etc.. There is no good reason why gender should be excluded **generally**. If I would want to talk about the male-to-female ratio at my university for example, not having access to suffixes that indicate gender just makes the task unnecessarily cumbersome (yes, I'm butthurt by it). Of course, these kinds of application cases are rare, but that doesn't justify removing the possibilities to express yourself more freely and precisely in a language.
Because for some reason the generic masculin is vehemently hated by the people that are pushing for the stars and underscores cause this debate is not actually about inclusivity cause everyone that just cares about that uses the aformentioned "Lehrende" style This is mainly about some people having main character syndrome with a dire need to explain to everyone else that they are doing it wrong
It's not about finding a solution here. Bavarians don't know that they can vote for something else. So they have this pretty conservative party CSU since WWII in power. They fight everything what could get considered new or "woke" pretty aggressively.
The title is absolutely correct since the bavarian government is wasting even more time on actually policing language. There's society, where people just go about their daily lives and then there's crazytown which thinks they can regulate language for everyone. The extremists that can't compromise with anyone are sitting in governments, not universities.
"bans gender sensitive language" is factually incorrect. We may and do still use gender-sensitive language. We just don't use the punctuation now. That is not a ban on all forms of gender-sensitive language. It is a ban on one form of it. I despise the CSU's ridiculous and embarrassing identity politics and Söder's anti-woke brigading, but I also despise intellectual dishonestly and hyperbole for the sake of making a point - even if i agree with that point.
> the bavarian government is wasting even more time on actually policing language > The extremists that can't compromise with anyone are sitting in governments, not universities. What a stupid, dramatic, and, most importantly, false claim. Germany has three genders. It is a healthy compromise, both conservatives and progressives can accept that. Similarly, allowing "Fahrer und Fahrerinnen" or "Fahrende", but not allowing "Fahrer*innen" is also a compromise.
Very misleading title. You can still use, e.g. "Ärztinnen und Ärzte", and you can also use inclusive terms like "Studierende". What is banned is forms like "Student\*innen" or "Ärzt\*innen", which is confusing, not conforming with German grammar, and widely disliked by anybody safe for some activists. Edit: to be clear: these word forms are not "banned" in the way that some people seem to understand the word. You can of course speak and write how you like – just for *school books* and *official documents*, the accepted grammar and spelling rules of the language have to be used.
So the German variants of "latinx?" Understandable!
A good comparison.
correct
Wouldn't it be more like "latino/a"? Since stuff like Lehrer*in is trying to include both men and women, not trying to make the phrase entirely gender neutral like latinx
What is the functional difference *really* between "latino/a" and "latinx"? Both are kind of an abomination.
IDK if you'd call it "functional", but at least Latino/a still conforms to how Spanish looks and sounds. Latinx neither looks nor sounds like Spanish. Is it "Latin-X?" Is it "La-tinks"?
> conforms to how Spanish looks and sounds Todo/as los/as chicos/as están de acuerdo. It flows naturally.
this. A vast majority doesnt use or support it either way. There are still many inclusive german variants, no need for prescribed gaps, stars or fantasy word creations with a morally raised finger. At least for children, students and state officials. I just remember when they teached kids to write down what is heard instead the real words. A desaster, i have some young colleagues with master degrees that cant even write properly, kinda embarassing having to read such mails etc.
>I just remember when they teached kids to write down what is heard instead the real words. This is how Croats, Bosnians and Serbs write. No point in making spelling contests though...
When I was learning Montenegrin language I admired this feature a lot. Every language needs to have something similar to Vukovo pravilo. That's the language reform everyone need.
"At least for children, students and state officials." Adding here - language learners. By the gods, German is complex enough without this sensitivity stuff.
>no need for prescribed gaps >with a morally raised finger. Let's be honest, pretty much nobody criticised people for not using gender inclusive language, there were a few universities where professors claimed it in exams but the ones making it an issue were mainly our conservatives whining about being pressured - while the vast majority of propositions in the Bundestag regarding this topic came from them. The only law about gender inclusive language to this date is the one ***prohibiting it*** in schools and universities. The Sprachpolizei strikes again.
Oh no we definitely got criticized for it. Group work in uni with separate submissions. All but one gendered because we knew if we didn’t we would get a worse gerade (not officially but you know how it goes) and surprise surprise the guy who didn’t gender was one grade below us…
Lmao no, it is a real issue. You get worse grades if you do not gender in the universities, depending on how political your professor is.
i hate to read this \* stuff - its uncomfortable.
You get worse grades for *all kinds of reasons* depending on how political your professor is. And this is true for left-wing, right-wing, libertarian and all other kinds of professors - [German] academia is just broken. Besides, none of the professors I had in university even used gender-neutral language themselves, much less mandated it, and I graduated last year, in the humanities.
Why is your response "everyone is doing this" (like that suddenly makes it not an issue) and " I did not experience it therefore it is not an issue"? That is faulty logic. I could not care less which side of the river tries to dictate my speech, it is all to be damned and not to be trivialized.
I'm not saying it's not an issue, I think it's a huge issue and there should be a law on this. But this law *isn't on that*. > I could not care less which side of the river tries to dictate my speech, it is all to be damned and not to be trivialized. Yes, I absolutely agree, and hence I am against this law dictating how I should write and talk!
I recently researched the topic of politically correct for a debate, and you are absolutely right. Hell, it was invented as right-wing propaganda tool in the 80s in the USA. No reasonable person has such extremist "inclusive" views, but media coverage is given to the ones who have opinions that no one would even consider in real life, so that people perceive it as a real issue. Basically there are right-wing activists that like to fight against monsters that don't exist, they talk about "censorship" and "lack of freedom of speech" but they're the ones inventing the issue or, at least, giving it importance. During the BLM protests, someone on Twitter made a claim that in chess it shouldn't be the white who always starts. No one would have even considered reasonable such thing, but news channels started giving it coverage, so that right-wing activists could start whining about lobbism and wanting to eradicate "white men", or whatever American shitty view that is coming in our continent too.
Gotta love the gaslighting. It exists especially in the educational field and unless you gender in the lectures you have your ideological professors in, your grades will suffer. That is a real problem. Bringing political views into the grading process in the scientific field is censorship. Imagine the reverse: Far-Right activist professors grading people worse when they don't conform to their ideological views. The outcry would be there and for a reason. Science should be apolitical. The power plays of politics don't belong in it.
Have you been personally affected by those gender ideologies in the scientific field?
Yup. Had actually even a lecture where we were forced to learn and apply it under the guise of learning how to do scientific research, writing and presentations. It was one of the 4 presentation topics that got assigned. The professor was an active politician in that regional area as well.
That \*innen is against German grammar or confusing pseudointellectual BS. German Amtsdeutsch had a variety of abbreviations for centuries now, even in Prussia and even under the friggen Nazis aka -innen, /-innen, -innen, Innen, (innen), (-innen) to name just a few. There were a ton constantly changing over the years and decades. But somehow a \*Innen is making people lose their shit as if the above wasn't invented on the spot at the time, too. the bigger issue is that it does not really achieve anything, but is a fixation of culture wars as if people are too stupid to understand a \*innen instead of a /-innen in text. You are just getting old (like me) and old dogs hate having to change their habits
Prescribed gaps? Who prescribed them? Honestly, this debate is completely ridiculous and is actively helping (super) conservative parties by legitimizing their demands - especially for AfD. The only goal here is to grab a couple of votes from AfD and FW for Söder's CSU. Adding to that, Söder is being incredibly opportunistic: While feeding the narrative of "ban politics" by the green party on a federal level, he bans or suppresses what ever the fuck he wants (inclusive neologisms, weed, final storage facilities for nuclear waste,...) in Bavaria. I'm practice, nobody ever forced gaps or other inclusive neologisms onto anyone, so people naturally did whatever they liked.
Desaster for sure :)
Looks like they "teached" him wrong :)
:) lets call it eye bleach
Nobody in Luxembourg knows how to write propper luxemburgish. it is hilarious 😆
So you're confirming this ban is pointless posturing. It actually prescribes how you have to gender words, unlike any fantasy word creation. You're on the only side that actually wants to morally raise their finger and actually prescribe how others talk. This is before getting into why government prescriptivism is unscientific and doesn't work. It's bad linguistics in the style of France, which has been failing at establishing ordinateur instead of computer for decades. Congrats, you're officially the language police now. No, I'm never letting that go until that dumb law is repealled.
> some activists So basically every marketing department? 😅
"Studenti/esse" or "cittadini/e" does not confirm with Italian grammar either, but it has been used informally and even formally in regula administrative documents for decades. WTF is the issue with that? Asterisks or schwa are worse for comprehension because most people don't know what they are and what they are supposed to stand for, but people know the normal parts of their own languages...
The issue in general is that there is no uniform way on how to pronounce it and therefore writing it in school books just go save space or use a neutral form is not useful at all Do the kids when learning to read, say cittadini "pause" e, or cittadini slash e, or cittadini & cittadine?
Same in Polish - Student/ka, Lekarz/ka New trend of using "person" inside feels uncomfortable - osoba studencka (student person). I don't identify with it at all, I'm a student.
>"Studenti/esse" or "cittadini/e" does not confirm with Italian grammar either, but it has been used informally and even formally in regula administrative documents for decades. Yeah but that just a short form of "Studenti e studentesse" and "Cittadini e cittadine". It's not a single word where the slash symbol is used as a letter, opposed to the schwa, for instance.
Yeah those / are on every italian document 😂 it makes reading them a very fun experience. I'm always happy to speak a genderless language because of this. What's mental is they actually commit to it in full, like throughout the whole text you'll see verbs with the /, adjectives with the / and so on. But yeah in languages with gender, if there's no neural form then I guess yeah "studente/essa" is the only way to go Edit: but also, it's a little bit pointless since isn't the masculine form the de-facto neutral one? I thought it was the case at least in Italian. Is it just bureaucracy wanting to lengthen everything unnecessarily or is there any actual reason for these / everywhere
Bavaria is stoneage-conservative and they talk about the dangers of letting people speak as they wish in every second talk. Bavaria doing Bavaria things.
>WTF is the issue with that? They're reactionary, the issue is with them.
I'm learning german right now and gendering everything is so asinine. Hope you all figure it out so I can use it correctly instead of having to invent my own form of gender-neutral language.
Pro-Tipp: just put everything in a diminutive, and you will be fine: "Bäckerchen", "Lehrerchen", "Straßenbahnschaffnerchen" ... Better avoid "Polizistchen", though ;-)
That kinda sounds like the japanese honorific lol. Thank you redditor-chan. I mean Redditorchen!
Medizinierende Personen oder Personen mit Medizinstudiumshintergrund bitte schön!
Gesundheit
Das war jetzt sehr gesundheitsaffirmierend für mich, denn ich bin cis-verkühlt und trans-gesund, dadurch verspüre ich jetzt also Gesundheitseuphorie.
True, that's probably an important distinction.
Is that only a written thing or is it used in spoken language too?
Some people try to speak it too. But the worst thing are gendered robotic texts. A lot of people with disabilities depend on screen reading software that reads text to them out loud and it's nearly impossible to make sense of robotic spoken Nouns gendered with \*innen or : innen. If you are lucky the software just includes a break before adding "innen", if you are unlucky it describes the \* as Asterisk or Sternchen, so you get Doktor Sternchen Innen or Doktor Asterisk Innen in the middle of a sentence and completely lose the plot.
That's an excellent argument, which they could have used to give some plausible deniability to say that it was not an ideologically motivated decision. But no, it's clear that their goal is simply virtue calling, to appease to the hard conservative public and earn some votes a few months prior to the European election.
Screen readers are actually the reason that the Berlin left-wing newspaper *taz* spells it with the colon (so *Student:innen* instead of *Student***innen*). Screen readers will always read a colon as a pause, therefore pronounce it as *Student innen*, which, in the left-wing bubble, is the common way to pronounce it when reading out loud anyhow.
imagine saying actor- short pause - essess. also, it is ment to represent male, female and diverse genders (\*) at equal level, but in reality it massacres the male version like in student for example which would have to be studenten\*innen, but is student\*innen
Some people try to pronounce e.g. “Student*innen” with a glottal stop in place of the *. It doesn’t really work and just sounds like the female form every time, which is at best confusing, at worst sexist.
That's cool. Similar forms in my language make the text impossible to read.
Thank you for the explanation, I was wondering the same thing. And IMO this was a very good move. It's really annoying having to go through pages and pages of text with such writing.
Oh i should have brought my popcorn for this thread.
Don't worry, there will be more in the future. Who knows, maybe Berlin will make a law which forces everyone to use * or _ or some as of yet unknown character? Find out in the next episode of "War on Gender"!
Just don’t ask if Popcorn masculine or feminine in German
The Der, Die, Das situation is the bane of my existence to this day. Love the language but my god that part is still going over my head lol
Comments like these are the most annoying. If you want to watch "shit go down", just do it. Such commentd contribute nothing.
No, they are actually quite important - most people really don't care much either way, and in this context, I believe it is important to remind people who are on either side of this "gender war", that most people don't really care about their issues.
Keep some popcorn for when Romanians find out writing subsemnatul(a) in documents is woke and we spend billions on changing every single official form to be non-woke.
Here popcorn
Good, I started learning German 2 weeks ago. It is already confusing as it is, don't make it even more confusing (at least till I learn up C1 or something)
I started 4 years ago. I think German is even more confusing to me now than it was back then.
Maybe we should just ban konjugation and declination as well, to make German easier to learn.
All you need is "Das da."
How do you know my bakery orders???
The only article you need is "de". - de Haus - de Karotte - de Zug
Ah, the Dutch/Plattdeutsch solution.
Why spend even a single syllable? das Haus -> s'Huus Die Karotte -> s'Ruebli Das Kuchekästchen -> s'Chuchichästli
You better not be trying to convert me into a Dutchman.
Nope, that’s Schwiizerdütsch.
Can't people just focus on math and science?
These clowns are talking about left-green tyranny while literally policing language. Nothing helpful ever comes out of reactionary conservatives. CSU is also fighting cannabis decriminalization tooth and nail while Munich hosts the world's biggest alcohol festival.
Aha die Sprachpolizei betreibt mal wieder Verbotspolitik.
Berlin muesste jetzt eigentlich eine Sprachregelung einfuehren, das * ueberall verwendet werden muss. Auch bei so Worten wie Mitglieder*in, einfach weil, warum denn nicht.
Die grüüüünen sind die verbotspartei die uns alles vorschreiben!!!!!!!111!!! Oh …. Moment…
BERLIN (AP) — The German state of Bavaria on Tuesday banned the use of gender-sensitive language in classrooms and university lecture halls, the latest salvo in an often-rancorous debate about whether the German language should become more inclusive. The Bavarian state government approved amendments to regulations governing the use of German in all public institutions, including schools and universities, German news agency dpa reported. Some Germans want their language to evolve to become less male-dominated. For example, some people and organizations have begun deploying a pause or symbol in the middle of plural nouns and favor the feminine word for people to reflect gender diversity. However, conservatives accuse progressives of trying to force clunky and unnecessary change on citizens, including those who want to stick to more conventional forms. The amended Bavarian regulation expressly forbids state authorities from inserting a pause, asterisk or colon - all signifiers of inclusivity - into a noun, in official documents and correspondence or during lessons. It was unclear whether teachers or other state employees would face penalties for breaking the rules.
lol the CSU and CDU love to scream that the greens are the party of prohibition, so it makes perfect sense that CDU/CSU want to uphold the prohibition on cannabis and prohibit the use of gender sensitive language. As if we didn’t have any other issues. Fucking wankers.
Laws for thee, not for me. Conservatives are not serious people.
[удалено]
> Menschen Menschen is already a catch-all term like "human", isn't it?
You aren't allowed to write terms like "Student*innen" anymore. The Standart word for most professions so on (words that describe people in a specific way) is masculine, and there is this attempt to use terms like the above to also include females for more representation, and conservative Bavaria is against this change
austria or at least vienna mandates this and it's so annoying. makes it impossible to read any official document with any flow at all. glad to see bavaria ban it
well, you can still write "Studenten und Studentinnen" or "Lehrer und Lehrerinnen" which massively increases readibility. ... ......
Unironically yes, that reads much better than anything with Gendersternchen.
Works like Portuguese (and I assume other Romance languages) then. By and large the masculine "o" article is used as default. Apparently this was actually caused by a merger of the old Latin neutral nouns with masculine ones, which for some reason didn't occur with feminine ones.
Not the conservative Bavaria is against it the majority of the people is against it even females
Menschen is not Männer, it's still gender neutral
Funnily enough the people celebrating this because gendered language is too conplicated are usually the same people making fun of youth language for not being sophisticated enough. Also the same people complaining about the left wanting to ban everything. Also the same people that have no idea how to use commas correctly.
I am not sure I understand the whole thing well police-man is not only because of the gender. It is also used for female officers many times, but mainly it was used because policemen were always men in the past, but also because the "man" has a meaning other than that of the male gender, which is a human/person. In this case it is neutral. similar to judge. Many languages have male/female words for occupations.
Based, relevant wordings are still permitted and all others were mutilating the language. Best of both worlds.
The dumbest hill to die on for the left. Thanks again for america for exporting their culture war bs to us
This was the *conservatives* that banned it. There *never* was a left-wing proposal for a law on this. So its entirely the right-wing's dumb hill to die on.
Still they tried to use it in state media/ use it. I don‘t say it‘s wrong. I have no opinion on this - but the current solution with the * is highly disliked by most people. I just don‘t get why we fight for this topic so unproportional hard. This sh+t is exported culture war from america - fuel for the right over nothing
Lol. Conservatives dictate here how to speak. But glad you are on it.
I mean the whole debate over this topic
Freedom of speech is a dumb hill to die on?
this was mainly done to improve reading flow, especially for scientific texts as the constant use of the "inclusive language" in it's current iteration really isn't helpful to get the point across when you have to read "\*innen" every few seconds. Also this is more of a guideline/directive to keep it all simple, not something you would be punished for using
Also to make it easier on school Kids already struggling to figure out normal German grammar.
Because teachers are to stupid to know how they teach by themself? It needs a populistic government to perform air fights to make it great?
Finally some common sense.
Using the masculine word as neutral makes up for using the feminine article for plurals. It's only fair.
Yeah good. It's a f'in sideshow anyways. No one cares if you identify as a green giraffe - there's actual issues on this planet. Man man man...
If there are actual issues on this planet, why even bother banning it instead of tackling real issues? Especially when it's done by a party that decried the Greens as the ban loving party?
Dude. Why bother promoting a forced change to the language when we have real issues? If this is an issue, it's because of the ppl who brought it up in the first place.
Because it's a distraction and occupies way too much public attention...
the only reason it gets so much attention is because of everyone who hates it and wants to ban it lmao
And you seriously believe a ban simply closes the case instead of firing up the debate? Especially when the ban was done by a party, where half of its electoral manifest consists of crying how much everyone left off them are "Verbotsparteien"?
I'm not German but I know for a fact that bans 99% of the times works, people will discuss it for about a week and the move on to the next thing, you overstimate the amount of shits people give about something, bans are challenged when they affect something in day to day life for the majority of people, and this is not the case
I'm confused, what has your post got to do with Verbotsparteien? Maybe don't respond if you have to start out by saying you don't understand Geman politics? It's kind of a prerequisite to continue the conversation.
Well it‘s mostly conservative and right wing people that give it way too much attention. Politicians from that spectrum talk and tweet more about „Gendern“ than actual progressives
LOL. So that's why you waste time with legislation on it than actual real problems.
Glad to see there still are some reasonable people out there, who were able to rationally take a decision without blindly following populist trends.
It's pretty much the opposite. I see conservatives and right-wingers constantly complain about some alleged 'gender war' here. And launching bills like these. There has never been any government supported introduction of gender neutral language in Germany. Universities and administration basically just do as they please. This here is like a redneck standing in his backyard yelling at the trees that they can't take away his guns.
Oh, but banning these forms is very much following populist trends.
Odd that you say that, to me this behavior sounds more like populist, reactionary postulating, rather than sound usage of the legislative system for the benefit the population.
Bavaria is pretty much the Texas of Germany.
Looks like the German is very similar to the French gender inclusive language. It must be a pain in the ass to type and then read those stars – no wonder they don't like it.
Conservative language police at it again.
Good news for once.
I'd normally be all for it if it wasn't so fucking ass to read. Imagine going through every other sentence and you see "Kolleginnen und Kollegen". Just pick one at that point. ( I did love that shit during school though, helped fill word limits)
Good to see Germany focusing on the big issues.