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by coribuci 2239 days ago
> Der Arzt/die Ärztin, der Pfleger/die Pflegerin (I think "Krankenschwester" isn't being used formally anymore)

Now you are being sexist. Of course Krankenschwester is used but it has a different meaning than Krankenbruder

> Occupations generally have a male and a female variant and as far as I know you are required to address both in formal speech (so I wouldn't call this an "experiment" anymore).

In many languages there are occupations which are specifficaly related to specific genres.

> The only area where I'd say this isn't implemented yet is informal speech. Few people watch their day-to-day language for gender neutrality.

This has become something disgusting. A mother is a mother. A father is a father. A mother can give birth, a father not. Some things will always be gender specific. Or shall we start calling people gender neutral: Mr./Mrs. Donald Trump

2 comments

I'm not sure I totally understand what you're trying to communicate but I didn't say we need to invent gender neutral terms for every German word. I said formal German is moving away from describing people using words that only exist as either masculine or feminine. So depending on where you sample your data it's not unusual to encounter these speech patterns. (Of course, if an ML algorithm can pick that up is a different question.)

And (this is an opinion now) I don't think that's "disgusting". Agreed, it's kinda clunky to always mention both variants but stereotypes are subtle and this is one thing we can do that's not too invasive. Of course this isn't an ideal solution either because gender non-conformity exists and the German language has no good way of addressing a lot of that. (But there are deeper cultural problems there.)

Also, I'm not sure what you mean with "Krankenbruder" but it sounds like something from /r/ich_iel.

I think you're right, but you're being downvoted by people who don't speak German and don't understand how "sexist" the language really is, even if Germans themselves are as enlightened on the subject as one could be.

People forget that English has reinvented itself for the last hundred years and it's not showing any signs of slowing down, whereas German-speaking culture is a little more resistant to the mores of newspeak. Until you lived and loved in both languages it's not really clear how equitable German culture is, in comparison to English. A German might say there is a level of respect in calling something feminine, whereas an English-only speaker might react with abhorrence. Such misunderstandings are to be expected across the language barrier.