are you still alive, Nazi?
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Quill7513@slrpnk.net 2 weeks agoi take less issue with him using gendered pronouns by default than i do with him being overly dismissive of someone trying to adjust the language to be more inclusive.
floop@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
4am@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Just remember that from his perspective, you are arguing against grammatical rules that are at the core of his communication experience due to his first language being German.‘so perhaps his initial reaction was confusion because he didn’t understand the angle - he thought he was being inclusive? Maybe?
I dunno I’m probably playin devil’s advocate without all the information here; I’ve just been resisting making jokes connecting grammatical pedantry to Germany the whole time.
Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Pretty much yeah, he thought he was already being inclusive, and I don’t blame him for doubling down initially given how awful that github thread was
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
If it’s written in German, I’d agree. In English, no he is just wrong. But perhaps is English just sucks, I don’t know and I don’t care to find out.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
It’s actually a very contentious grammatical issue in Germany from what I have been told by a German friend. That there is definitely a contingency of people pushing for more gender neutral language and a large amount of pushback from those who think the entire idea is absurd because of how gendered the language is.
I can see a bit of both sides of the argument. It’s important to make people feel welcomed and not like being a male is the default for everything. On the other hand, language evolves often very slowly and you can’t just force people to change the language entirely overnight. It does sound like much of the pushback is less political in nature and more grammatical as adding neutral phrases to a gendered language becomes quickly a complex task with complex new words. However, some of the pushback is also political in nature, so it’s hard to gauge whether the Ladybird situation was truly political or more grammatical at it’s core.
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 2 weeks ago
As a Russian language speaker, I can tell you any gender-neutral language is absolutely impossible with Russian. The old kind of egalitarian (just normal really) language was to use the same form and gender of the word denoting profession or position as with male person, when it’s a woman. Because the old feminitives usually meant “wife of someone of that profession”, with a good deal of confusion whether they mean that or actually a woman of that role, and also they have sort of a flavor of vulgarity.
There’s a modern (very limited to leftist fashion) tendency of inventing feminitives not common before.
Like for “author” there’s “автор” (male form usually used for women too), “авторша” (traditional feminitive with a flavor of rudeness), “авторка” (new fashionable feminitive nobody really uses).
Or for “psychologist” there’s “психолог” (normal male form), “психологичка” (not traditional, kinda rude feminitive), “психологиня” (new feminitive really used often enough, but that’s when it means someone your age with that being like below 35).
jungle@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yep. I’m a native Spanish speaker and I’m also old. Spanish is similar to German in that the male version of words is already gender neutral. But there’s a huge effort to make it truly gender neutral, and I understand the reason and support the idea. Having lived many years in an English speaking country and in corporate environments, I use “they” in English without even thinking. It comes naturally to me, especially as a manager talking about people I manage, to protect their identity.
But there’s no way I’m hell I’m using gender neutral Spanish because it sounds extremely stupid to me. It’s a complete distortion of the language, and I have to make a huge effort not to think less of people who use it. None of my friends or family uses it.