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Is this for real? (Please see text) (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Is this for real? I can't draw no other conclusion than US defaultism in trans activism gives a free pass to TERF politics in Europe. This kind of news from Germany cannot mean anything good.

According to Wikipedia:

In 2019, the German Language Association VDS (Verein Deutsche Sprache; not to be confused with the Association for the German Language Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache, GfdS) launched a petition against the use of the gender star, saying it was a "destructive intrusion" into the German language and created "ridiculous linguistic structures". It was signed by over 100 writers and scholars.[11] Luise F. Pusch, a German feminist linguist, criticises the gender star as it still makes women the 'second choice' by the use of the feminine suffix.[12] In 2020, the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache declared Gendersternchen to be one of the 10 German Words of the Year.[13]

In 2023, the state of Saxony banned the use of gender stars and gender gaps in schools and education, which marks students' use of the gender stars as incorrect.[14][15] In March 2024, Bavaria banned gender-neutral language in schools, universities and several other public authorities.[16][17] In April 2024, Hesse banned the use of gender neutral language, including gender stars, in administrative language.[18]

Here are the original Wikipedia references

"Der Aufruf und seine Erstunterzeichner". Verein Deutsche Sprache (in German). 6 March 2019. Retrieved 5 April 2020.
Schlüter, Nadja (22 April 2019). ""Das Gendersternchen ist nicht die richtige Lösung"". Jetzt.de (in German). Retrieved 5 April 2020. "GfdS Wort des Jahres" (in German). Retrieved 13 December 2020.
Jones, Sam; Willsher, Kim; Oltermann, Philip; Giuffrida, Angela (2023-11-04). "What's in a word? How less-gendered language is faring across Europe". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-04-05.
"Schools in Saxony are forbidden to use gender language". cne.news. Retrieved 2024-04-05.

I got into this rabbit hole from this news article

News article in German

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[+] [email protected] -10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

And why would you care? You are obviously not German (otherwise you would know that the shit you post is BS) and obviously scared about inclusivity (because you worry about how other people call themselves).

Get a life.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Since this vile comment goes against Lemmy etiquette I need not provide a response. But I will.

how other people call themselves

You must be another level of stupid to write this out. Perhaps you mean, I shouldn't care what other "governments" or "majorities" want their citizens to call or not-call themselves. Only a nationalist would say such a thing, that your government has the right to self-define (or ..impose?) how its people call themselves. This is some true Orban-level shit you managed to fit in your, well, fit.

And, yes, this is a politics issue I want to see in the same maps we monitor US gender politics with.

obviously not German

Very proudly not so. I cherish the fact that German nationalists tend to end up shot or hang, as one of the few things that provide meaning to my post-WWII life. The historical equivalent of a narcissist man-child demanding attention to himself, a real small-dick energy nation, that enthusiastically voted for a mustached idiot for the job. So, not German, and so happy about it.

obviously scared about inclusivity

The fact that you fail to understand this is a pro-inclusivity post means that you are so dump that you would have been euthanized in your own country, less than 100 years ago, unless you enrolled to a specific party of anti-intellectual idiots. Ah I forgot, you already are. Sound survival of the fittest strategy.

Now, let's sit around waiting you to ridicule yourself with another one of these comments ROFL

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

The "star construct" you mention and hang an entire theory on is just a German language construct. It has to do with gender but not the way you imagine it to be. Just gender as a language construct (German is full of gender constructs).

Maybe I made the error of explaining your post with the typical US "there is only one gender" stance which is so irritatingly omni present on youtube nowadays.

But if that was not your intention, it might also be an error to call me nationalist. I am not. I am all for gender inclusivity. If you are as well we have no beef.

And PS: yes, you are still an asshole.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

you are still an asshole

Thank you

the error of explaining your post with the typical US

Sure enough going after your colloquotors' nationality was an ill-chosen angle, since you wanted to criticize the idea of one-gender, reducing it to Americans. Same goes for another asshole who was quick to attribute it to me supposedly being the speaker of a "genderless" language.

This is a bullshit attitude because you are going for the extra step.

"You don't get the nuances of our language to understand what this is about. It is because you are not German / you are the native of a genderless language / you are a US defaultist who wants to impose his own view"

For one thing I hardly think English is a genderless language, and second has it crossed your mind someone can speak several languages fluently, some of which "gendered".

I am not responsible for the lamentable state of internet discussions these days, but next time try to formulate and debunk the opponent idea before spewing several extra thought steps, bringing ad hominem and national origins into the mix, if you don't want to be spoken to like that.

an error to call me nationalist. I am not

Great, Good for you

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

Jeez you really are full of it.

Nevermind. Have fun playing by yourself.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 months ago (2 children)

There is no good way to use gender neutral language in German. The language works differently than English.

So people came up with workarounds like putting stars in nouns to include both forms of the word for male and female but German grammar does not work well with this. There is also no good equivalent to using "they" as a neutral pronoun.

People still are trying to figure out how to make German more inclusive but this isn't easy.

Don't be ignorant.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I 100% agree that it's not perfect. Still, banning an attempt at being inclusive is clearly not about how impractical it can be. And even if it were, policing language is stupid 9 times out of 10.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This is a cultural thing. My wife has studdied German culture, particularly relating to their relationship with their language, pretty extensively and from what she says they are exceedingly resistant to changes to their general language at all. Hence all of the compound nouns for new devices instead of coming up with a new word. Apparently the cultural adoption of "Das handy" for cellphone was a cultural milestone since they actually used something new instead of trying to cram together "Mobile Wireless Vocal Communication Device" into one word.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

If you police it it's not a cultural thing. If it was just a cultural thing than we could just let the * slowly die out. But banning language hinders progress. And I'm sorry, but the German language is constantly shifting and changing. There have even been multiple planned changes that went pretty well in recent history. Using English words might have been a big change back then, but now it's really common. The first terms for mobile were things like "Taschentelefon" (pocket telephone), "drahtloses Telephone" (wireles telephone) or the one that is still in use "Mobiltelefon" (mobile phone). None of these seem outlandish to me.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Same in Italian.

Italian is heavily gendered, even inanimate objects have genders. A chair? It's a female. A door? It's a male.

It's not easy to modify a language; some people on the internet are trying using stars and other non-letters, but the result is ridiculous and nobody actually speaks like that in real life.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

In Dutch a door is female. Chair? Male.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Luckily it is almost completely irrelevant in Dutch whether a word is male of female. Heck, I am Dutch an I wouldn't be able to tell male and female words apart most of the time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I speak Flemish and when I speak dialect it's pretty easy. When I say 'ne stoel' it's masculin. 'Ne deur' doesn't work so is femine.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Interesting, in the Netherlands we mostly avoid having to gender anything but humans.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

''De deur staat open. Doe je haar even dicht?''

I mean, you can't go without gendering if the language is like that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Unless you say 'De deur staat open, doe je die even dicht?' It avoids having to learn those stupid genders.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

So similar yet so different :)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I don't know what a gender star is, but it sounds cool

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

So in German we have different forms of job descriptions depending if the gender of the person. So doctor would be Arzt for a dude and Ärztin for a lass. Now when talking about a mixed gender group of doctors, the plural form of the masculine form would be generally used. This kinda leads to people always thinking about a group of male doctors. To mitigate that, there's been multiple attempts to make more inclusive forms. For the most time listing both forms was the go to, as in Ärzte und Ärztinnen. The gender star was an attempt to combine it into Ärzt*Innen in which the star was read as a little pause. Other ways to write that pause include ÄrztInnen where you just capitalize the I and my favourite Ärzt:Innen, as the : is read as a pause by screen readers while the star is read as it's own word by then. My actual favourite form however is gendering after Phettberg which entirely gets rid of the gender and builds a different plural: Ärztis. It also sounds cute and I'm all for more cuteness. That form sadly is used nowhere.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Let's take the word "Kassierer", which is German for cashier. Kassierer is the male form, Kassiererin is the female form.

The idea of the Gendersternchen is that you write Kassierer*in to indicate that it means either male or female. I believe "Sternchen" ("little star") translates to asterisk.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

It denotes all genders not only male and female by using the asterisk as a wildcard for everything that could be in between the ends of the spectrum from male (Kassierer) to female (Kassiererin).

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I know nothing about german but some languages don't even have neutral pronouns, even things have gender. In this case you either invent a new word or let it be.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I am pretty sure gender norms, even strict ones, occur to grammatically genderless languages, like Hungarian IIRC. So if a Hungarian student used a '*' to be non-binary inclusive, this could not have meaning in this society, because their language is genderless? I doubt it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

You ok?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

Sorry i don't get it. As I said you can use but you would have to invent a new word or just try to use some other word with non related meaning. For exemple dome languages without neutral words will use the male pronoun as the norm when talking about man and women together. I'm trying to say just accept this as women have done for centuries

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