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by mmoll
1687 days ago
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A much better idea than that horrible asterisk and its pronunciation. However, I think it still misses the mark. There‘s an opportunity to make German simpler AND more gender-neutral by completely dropping both the masculine and feminine forms. Other languages have done so (or got really close) before. English and Dutch (not the Flemish variant) being the closest ones to German. Instead of saying „die Bürger*innen“, you could just say „die Bürger“, which would simply be the plural form of „das Bürger“. It also avoids the whole „Bürger* innenmeister* innen“ issue… |
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Currently we say “der Bürger“ for a citizen of unknown or male sex. „der“ is male, so certain people perceive sexism.
The plural for citizens of unknown, male or female sex is „die Bürger“. „die“ is female. Yet in this case no one perceives it as sexism.
The proposal you refer to just removes the former while leaving the latter. By this logic of „the (der) spoon“ being sexist, it’s now just become sexist towards men?
Add to this the fact that German has words to refer specifically to „female citizens“, „female doctors“ etc, but not for men, they’re generic. Yet no one complains.