Germans and Brits try to eliminate gendered nouns in the German language

If you have studied German, you will know that the language has three classes of gendered nouns, feminine, masculine, and neuter. The male/neuter and female forms of the word are referred to asein andeine. The German word for girl is "Mdchen".

In German, the word "actress" is usually added to the male form in order to indicate whether the word is male or female.

You can read about the kerfuffle by clicking on the headline below. Steve Pinker thinks there is a category error.

Not from The Onion: U Cambridge seizes zeitgeist with gender-neutral German. (In linguistics, "gender" means "kind," not "sex"; the term is related to "genus, generic," and "genre.") https://t.co/W0hjiT5hAO

— Steven Pinker (@sapinker) October 27, 2022

Click here to read the article from the Times of London.

The motivation below came from Cambridge University.

It aimed to encourage students to speak more “inclusively” and not fall foul of those who may be offended by sex-specific pronouns. But the University of Cambridge’s decision to say Auf Wiedersehen to teaching gendered German has prompted warnings from linguists that students risk making a fool of themselves when talking with native speakers.

Undergraduates paying £9,250 a year have been urged to use “inclusive language” and “to use gender- and non-binary-inclusive language when we address or refer to students and colleagues, both in writing and in speech in English and in German”.

Course managers said they encouraged students and staff to choose newer forms with plural nouns.

When writing, they may render feminine nouns unisex by inserting an asterisk before the suffix — a nonstandard usage known as the “gender star”.

They noted that “in extended German texts grammatical structures can inhibit inclusivity . . . relative and other pronouns, for example, are obligatorily marked for grammatical gender, so going gender-free is difficult to achieve”.

There are a number of ways to use gender-inclusive German. Two are here.

• Using synonyms: Whenever possible, most Germans willing to use gender-neutral language try to avoid the nouns that remain in the generic masculine. They use newly introduced synonyms like “Lehrende” to replace “Lehrer” (masculine teachers, the default option) and “Lehrerinnen (female teachers) or “Studierende” for “Studenten” (male students, the default option) and “Studentinnen” (female students). Instead of saying “Anwalt” (the male generic version of lawyer), you’d say “Rechtsvertretung” (legal representative). This is very tricky and requires a lot of practice. The website “Geschickt gendern” can help.

The male and female teachers are referred to as "Lehrer" and "Lehrerin", respectively.

• The asterisk (“Gendersternchen”): This is perhaps the favorite of the young generation and often used on social media. You write the generic male version, add an asterisk (*) and the female ending: “Lehrer*innen”, “Bauarbeiter*innen”. This is supposed to also include the people who don’t identify themselves as either female or male.

There are two motivating factors for the change in language. The default article is seen as sexist.

In Germany, the debate about gender-neutral and inclusive language is complicated by grammar. Just as in many other languages, gender in German isn’t denoted by personal pronouns alone. German nouns that refer to people have traditionally been masculine or feminine. So, a male citizen is a Bürger and a female citizen is a Bürgerin. But in the plural, the masculine is traditionally used by default — a point that’s been contentious at least as far back as the second wave of feminism in the 1960s.

The law in one German state is one of the solutions.

In 2019, Hanover became the first state capital to mandate the use of gender-neutral language in all official communication, from emails to brochures and posters. It deployed what’s known as the “gender star,” an asterisk placed within a noun to indicate it refers to men, women and nonbinary people alike. For instance, the word for all citizens became Bürger*innen.

The gendering of nouns is seen as offensive by some people.

The conservaties in Germany are fighting against the change in the language. The prediction is that the language will change from masculine to feminine.

I don't have a dog in this fight, but I'll let Germans fight it out because it's their language. This entire effort is misguided if that is the case. The classes are labeled as "masculine", "feminine" and "neuter"

There is a French word for "le" and a French word for "la" It is only a matter of time before there is a change there.