this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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Wait until you hear about languages where everything is gendered.
We're currently debating, whether BürgerInnen, Bürger:innen or "Bürgerinnen und Bürger" is the proper way to address all citizens. This is not even about anything LGBTQ, it's simply acknowledgement of the concept of non-male people (which is really hard for some conservatives).
I do love a Good Bürger.
Welcome to Good Burger, home of the Good Burger, may I take your order?
I'm a dude, he's a dude, she's a dude, we're all dudes hey!
That’ll be five bucks.
In French we have a similar problem. Currently the most popular form is "citoyen.ne.s" or "citoyen.nes" (besides the good old "citoyens" or "citoyennes et citoyens"), which sometimes gets rendered as a website by some text displayers (e.g. les habitant.es). It's technically supposed to be a middle dot (citoyen·ne·s) but nobody has that on their keyboard (I literally had to copy-paste it from wikipedia) so people use the point instead. We used to use parentheses like "citoyen(ne)s" but these have vastly be replaced by the dots.
Interesting. In German typography we used to use lower quotation marks at the beginning of a quote and lower quotation marks at the end of a quote, both in handwriting and print:
„Amazing“
But the lower version isn't found on the default QWERTZ keyboard layout so in personal digital communication (instant messages, emails, etc) especially you find double upper ones a lot:
"Amazing" or 'Amazing'
The formal spelling rules haven't been updated and you may still find the lower-upper vision in professional publications where the software adjusts the quotation marks according to a global setting. But most anything that is typed directly by a user will use the lazy lower-lower version.
We actually have the same issue with our « quotes » and accentuated capital letters in French, so « l'État » sometimes becomes "l'Etat".
FYI, hold Alt and the press 0 1 8 3 then release Alt.
Doesn't work on a phone/tablet
If it's an Android and using Gboard you can go to the symbol tab and hold - to choose the · symbol.
I prefer the elimination of gender by using the participle because I think it’s easier to read and say, e.g. instead of Student:In you say Studierende (I guess also using the genderless plural of the participle, similar to the English concept). I’m not sure what the equivalent for Bürger would be though. Geborgene?
Don't think that works for words that don't have a verb as a base, i.e. Krankenpflege works because Pflege is a Verb and can be conjugated to Krankenpflegende but Mechaniker:in doesn't conjugate.
Also Geborgene means nothing even adjacent to being a Bürger. I'd personally would have guessed Bürgende but even that is a major stretch. You would either have to create an entirely new way to conjugate nouns or you have to use synonyms that can be conjugated that way. Both ways will be a huge change to how German is spoken
Why not just use the generic plural form (Bürger) as people always have? It has always been used for mixed groups so why shouldnt it continue to? And sometimes it doesnt even work (eg. for "Bauer". The plurals would be "Bauern" and "Bäuerinnen".
The problem people have with the Generischer Maskulinum is, that it is exactly that, the male plural form.
Grammatical genus is not the same as biological gender. Or do people that are biologically neither male nor female need a third plural form?
That would be another advantage if we had a form that clearly eliminates the gender.
Bürgende?
"Liebe Mitmenschen", meistens ist es nicht nötig, nur diejenigen mit der Staatsbürgerschaft anzusprechen, sondern alle, die in dem Land leben
Portuguese! Even the f...ing objects are gendered!
Most things in Portuguese are gendered, yet we sometimes care fuck all about them (e.g: Sandwich is usually feminine, but it can be masculine depending on who you talk to).
Source: I'm Portuguese.
In brazil sandwich is male and we speak portuguese
Wrong, we speak brazilian
Sorry, i forget that we speak brazilian most of the time and spanish on the weekends
I'm brazilian too and my sandwich is also male! ♂️
Me, a german: Why would they not be gendered? At least you have only 2 genders
nO tHeRe ArE iNfInItE gEnDeRs!!!!
"mmm this table looks quite feminine to me"
Is Bürger not just "citizens"
Male citizens.
Spanish.
The Austrian state I used to live in (Niederösterreich) actually just outlawed gendering words like that on any government documents. Absolutely idiotic.
Or, you know. Just Bürger, the generic masculinum. That all-inclusive. And it worked for a long time. It's only because some snowflakes thought they needed something to complain about that we're having this whole debate.
No it's not and there's scientific evidence. Studies have shown that female children will name career paths as their dream job less often if only the male version is shown to them, presumably because they think it's not an option for them, as it's perceived to be only possible for males to follow that path. Explicitly mentioning both genders suddenly makes girls also want to become doctors.
You might not like it, but there's enough evidence to show that it has merit.
"scientific evidence".
Just like the 'scientific evidence' that, for whatever reason, in countries where women are way less free than in the west, many more women go into STEM?
According to https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/200758/umfrage/entwicklung-der-anzahl-der-medizinstudenten/ since at least 2010 there are way many more women studying medicine than men.
You might not like it, but just because it's "Die" Sonne And "Der" Mond, That Does not suddenly mean that the moon is male and the sun is female, just how "Der Schüler" Does not imply that they are male or female.
This whole discussion about grammatical gender is stupid and biased as fuck by "researchers" who come to the conclusion they want to come to. I work in academia myself, I know how much bullshit gets pushed through.
Don't get me wrong, I support anyone being able to do whatever they want. Women can do engineering just as much as men can, same for medicine and everything else. The literal only upside that men have is - on average - higher physical strength. And that just means that a higher percentage of men is strong enough to do certain physical job than the percentage of women. Doesn't mean the women strong enough to do that job do it any worse than men.
Statista is a website that steals data from everywhere, it's not a source as they don't do any research.
Der bre benutzt einfach "snowflakes" unironisch, was ist das, 2016?
Ja, Kumpel * in dud * in bro* sephine. Diese ganzen Gendersternverherrlicher innen brauchen einfach etwas worüber sie innen sich aufregen *innen könn *innen.
Ausserdem, bro *sephine, hast du mein Profil soweit durchgeschaut dass du rausgefunden hast dass ich männlich bin, oder hast du gerade mein Gender assumiert? Hier hättest du, um deinen eigenen Standards zu entsprechen, ein Genderneutrales Pronomen verwenden sollen, Bro *sephine.
Gerade nachgeschaut. In meinem Profil steht überhaupt nichts zu meinem Gender. Du hast also zwangsweise einfach mal so angenommen, dass ich ein Mann bin. Stimmt das mit deiner Ideologie überein?
Bro ist mir egal ob du den Stern nutzt oder nicht, du bist nur bissl cringe im Internet unterwegs und ich wollte mich drüber lustig machen.
Dass du da nen ganzen Paragrafen schreiben musstest, ist schon telling ne
women right? so annoying...
I wouldn't mind a generic feminimum just as I don't mind a generic masculinum. Grammatical gender doesn't have anything to do with actual gender. It's just a quirk of the language.