[Lexicog] Gender neutrality in German

[Fritz Goerling]

Hi there Patrick,

Thanks for your questions and remarks. I answer below.

Greetings,
Fritz



  > the beautiful gender-neutral word "Mensch",

  Ah, Fritz, yes -- but how curious that the grammatical gender of "Mensch"
  is masculine - "der Mensch".

       Grammatical gender in German cannot be changed. It is
       totally irregular, and the fact that "Mensch" has the masculine
       article does not mean that every "Mensch" has to be a "Mann"
      (man).  So when I say "Mensch" is gender-neutral in German,
       I mean that it can refer to both genders.

   Don't you feel that, for the sake of consistency,
  it ought to be neuter - "das Mensch"?

       Good joke. Apart from that, "das Mensch" is a severe insult
       in German. It dehumanizes the person and makes him/her
       to be something undefinable, "neither fish nor fowl."

   Maybe we could start a movement
  in favour of "das Mensch und die (singular) Mädchen"?

      Good joke again. "Mädchen" (girl) is grammatically neuter
      but that does not make the "Mädchen" neuter.

   Or are my intution
  about this based on the fact that, as a native speaker of English, I am
  insensitive to the truly arbitrary nature of grammatical gender in those
  languages that have it?

      You are right, at least for German I can say that grammatical
      gender is very arbitrary.

   I.e. does the fact that Mensch is grammatically
  masculine and Mädchen is grammatically neuter bother only English
  speakers -- or only me -- and not German native speakers?

      No it does not bother German speakers.
      We know that a "Mädchen" is feminine.


  Returning to Germany in 2003 after a 40-year absence (I spent a few months
  in Berlin when I was a student), I was struck by several language changes,
for
  example:

  "Fräulein" had become politically incorrect during my 40-year absence.
  Now all women are addressed and referred to as "Frau X", without regard
  to age or marital status.  Progress?  I think so.

      Not quite. Age stills plays a role. I don't know the exact age when
      you start to address a representative of the feminine gender by
      "Frau" but there is a cut-off age in the teenager years.
      What one calls progress another one might see in a different light.
      I have met unmarried French women over sixty who insist on
      being called "mademoiselle" (Fräulein).


  Considerable ingenuity is used to maintain gender-neutrality in
communications
  like emails, using slashes, parentheses, and word-internal capitals.  So,
  someone wanting to start an email. gender-neutrally with the words "Dear
  Colleagues" (plural) will write "Liebe KollegInnen" with a capital I in
the middle
  of the word.  The singular of this is "Liebe(r) Kolleg(in)".  Probably
there is a
  study of all this somewhere but if there is,  I don't know it.

       These monstrous solutions you are mentioning show the difficulty
       to make German gender-neutral.

  The problems of using English "they" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun
  (which goes back at least to the 18th century and the use of which in a
  lexicographical context was pioneered in the Cobuild dictionary in the
1980s)
  pale into insignificance compared with equivalent problems in German.

      You seem to be well informed. Indeed, they pale into
      insignificance ... You can try a google search for "frauengerechte
      Sprache" and will see how few hits you get as compared with
      when you search for "gender-neutral, gender-accurate, gender-
      inclusive language" in English.


  And oh, by the way, another thing that changed in my 40-year absence --

  There are still strikingly more notices in Germany than in England telling
  you that you are not allowed to do something, but now they tend to say
  "nicht gestattet" (not allowed) rather than "verboten" (forbidden).  I'm
not
  sure what the pragmatic force of this is. Can you shed any light on it?

      Sure. "Nicht gestattet" sounds nicer being more in line with a less
      strict and more relaxed contemporary German society. You will probably
      confirm that fundamental societal change, as you live in cosmopolitan
      Berlin.  I know "verboten" is one of the sterotypes about Germans
insisting
      on stern discipline. One might hear the word in the mouth of
      Colonel Klink, the protoype of a Nazi soldier in "Hogan's Heroes".
      By the way, I get a kick out of watching "Hogan's Heroes" (an older
      American TV series) and do not feel offended at all. Have you seen it?

      I am interested in your "Digitales Wörterbuch der Deutschen
      Sprache".

  -- Patrick

  Current Address:
      Dr Patrick Hanks
      Digitales Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache,
      Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften,
      Jägerstrasse 22-23,
      Berlin 10117,
      Germany.
      Phone: + 49 30 20370 539
      Fax:  + 49 30 20370 214




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