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What do you think of the gendered aspects of the German language?
There are no they/them pronouns. Also, they tried to do away with the generic masculinum in German by using an asteriks. Clients (Kunden) are now Kund*innen (pronounced via glottal stop (see also Student*innen). Nonbinary humans are siginified with a : (for example Student:innen).
What do you think of this? I wonder how American SJW's would react if English were such a gendered language as well.
| by Anonymous | reply 14 | February 22, 2021 1:05 AM |
Ich finde es einfach toll!
| by Anonymous | reply 1 | February 21, 2021 8:39 PM |
Genders only made learning the language that much harder, but it will be an uphill climb trying to change things after 1,000 years.
What I always wondered is how new words got their gender. Like, a cellphone. Who are the powers that be who decides it would be das Handy (neuter).
| by Anonymous | reply 2 | February 21, 2021 8:46 PM |
The German obsession with titles/honorifics is much more annoying than the gender system governing its nouns, which is not that different from many other languages. I assume at some point in the near future that masculine and neuter nouns will collapse into one gender, and then only set expressions will indicate a noun's erstwhile gender (sort of like modern Dutch).
| by Anonymous | reply 3 | February 21, 2021 8:55 PM |
In languages that include gender, new words usually acquire their gender by their initial or ending sounds, or by associating with the gender of other objects in their class.
| by Anonymous | reply 4 | February 21, 2021 8:56 PM |
Every German that I've met in Berlin's sex clubs, has impeccable English, so it's never really bothered me.
| by Anonymous | reply 5 | February 21, 2021 9:00 PM |
Studies have also shown that native speakers have an innate sense of assigning gender to words they don’t know and in experiments there will even be broad agreement on which gender to assign to nonsense words.
| by Anonymous | reply 6 | February 21, 2021 9:03 PM |
R2 Das Handy just makes sense. The internet blog is Das Blog though, which doesnt make sense.
| by Anonymous | reply 7 | February 21, 2021 9:03 PM |
woke white people criticizing the Spanish language for gendered nouns and insisting that Latinos call themselves Latinx is just another form of colonization.
| by Anonymous | reply 8 | February 21, 2021 9:05 PM |
English was so far ahead of its time by being a non-gendered language from day one.
| by Anonymous | reply 9 | February 21, 2021 9:06 PM |
Das Madchen - the girl Die Mädchen - the girls
Why is one girl neuter but multiple girls feminine? This makes no sense.
| by Anonymous | reply 10 | February 21, 2021 9:06 PM |
Because all diminutives (words with the -chen suffix) are neuter, R10. And it's spelled Mädchen in both singular and plural forms. The plural "die" is not equivalent to the feminine singular "die."
| by Anonymous | reply 11 | February 21, 2021 9:10 PM |
R10 Die is always plural.
| by Anonymous | reply 12 | February 21, 2021 9:10 PM |
English wasn't always a non-gendered language, R9. Old English was much closer in that way to the mother German tongue from which it originated. But I agree, good thing it did evolve--all those different Germanic cases, endings and gender rules frustrate me as a native-English speaker. Luckily, Modern English's "cases" are pretty much whittled down now to our pronoun forms, third-person-singular verbs conjugation in the present tense, and the possessive "declension" markers ['s] or [s']. Plus the odd weird plural, e.g. 1 ox but 2 oxen... :)
| by Anonymous | reply 14 | February 22, 2021 1:05 AM |
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