{"id":1908,"date":"2014-03-26T15:21:49","date_gmt":"2014-03-26T14:21:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eurotalk.com\/blog\/?p=1908"},"modified":"2014-03-26T15:21:49","modified_gmt":"2014-03-26T14:21:49","slug":"can-language-ever-be-gender-neutral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/can-language-ever-be-gender-neutral\/","title":{"rendered":"Can language ever be gender-neutral?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recent news<\/a> that the German Justice Ministry is pushing for the German language to be made more \u2018gender neutral\u2019\u00a0will probably bring a sigh of relief to us German-learners the world over. Don\u2019t get me wrong, I love<\/b> German, but years of grappling with genders (a girl is \u2018it\u2019, whilst a table is \u2018he\u2019 and a bag is \u2018she\u2019!? \u2013 what\u2019s going on here!?) doesn\u2019t always feel worth it, when I\u2019m constantly asking \u2018is it der, die or das App?\u2019 only to be told by native Germans \u2018I\u2019m not really sure!’<\/p>\n

\"German\"<\/a>For us English speakers, the idea of allocating an arbitrary \u2018masculine\u2019, \u2018feminine\u2019 or \u2018neutral\u2019 to random objects around us just doesn\u2019t feel right, and causes many a problem for learners of all nationalities. Screwing up the gender isn\u2019t going to cause an international incident, but the bad news is that you have to get the gender right to get any other aspect of grammar right as well, so it really is a necessary part of learning the language.<\/p>\n

But maybe not for much longer! The current campaign intends to do away with overtly gendered ways of referring to people and professions. Currently, Germans have the (rather archaic-sounding) convention of referring to all professions, for example, as gender-specific, e.g. der Arzt \/ die \u00c4rztin (doctor), der Student \/ die Studentin (student) or der Manager \/ die Managerin. It is common to see an endless array of forward slashes (\u2018der\/die Bewerber\/in\u2019 (applicant) or the bizarre-looking \u2018die TeilnehmerInnen\u2019 (participants) as a way of getting around the modern need to incorporate both male and female variants into job ads etc. This is basically just a headache for everyone involved. Yes, we get that the job can be done by men and women! We don\u2019t need a special word for everything that can be done by a woman. Instead, some suggest a gender neutral equivalent, such as \u2018das Bundeskanzler\u2019 (Federal Chancellor \u2013 i.e. Merkel) instead of the current feminine form (die Bundeskanzlerin) which draws attention to the fact she is a woman, rather than just being the leader of one of the world\u2019s most powerful countries.<\/p>\n

This is all hypothetical, and some theorise that the language might do away with all gender articles (der\/die\/das, ein\/eine\/ein) and simply refer to everything as \u2018das\u2019, or maybe the more commonly used \u2018die\u2019. But it certainly would be helpful to anyone trying to get their head around these rather arbitrary distinctions.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not really just German that struggles with these gender distinctions though. Even when writing English there are some tricky situations to get around. Endless use of \u2018he\/she\u2019 sounds just as awkward as constant \u2018der\/die\u2019 or putting ‘In’ on the end of everything, but simply using \u2018he\u2019 all the time feels like a somewhat unsatisfactory solution. I often resort to writing \u2018they\u2019, as the closest to a gender-neutral equivalent that we have, although this can often sound odd, and is technically a plural. Fortunately, although we do have female versions of some professions (e.g. actress, policewoman), mostly you can just say \u2018doctor, dentist, teacher\u2019 and no one bugs you to put \u2018female\u2019 in front \u2013 which actually feels a whole lot more sexist than simply implying that gender has nothing to do with it. Perhaps we could do with a generic word that implies \u2018he and\/or she\u2019 without needing to be too finicky about it every time. Somehow, though, I don\u2019t see \u2018it\u2019 catching on as a way to refer to people! For now, we\u2019re probably stuck with either slightly awkward or slightly sexist \u2013 but it\u2019ll be interesting to see if the Germans manage to find a better solution.<\/p>\n

Alex<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recent news that the German Justice Ministry is pushing for the German language to be made more \u2018gender neutral\u2019\u00a0will probably bring a sigh of relief to us German-learners the world over. Don\u2019t get me wrong, I love German, but years of grappling with genders (a girl is \u2018it\u2019, whilst a table is \u2018he\u2019 and a … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[244,3],"tags":[32,406,243,157,333],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}