[DocTomoe]

Consider that the text is, in fact, from the 19th century.

Also, 'Weib' is not rude in every context. "Wein, Weib und Gesang" is not diminutive towards women, but in fact appreciative (as in 'necessary for having a good time'). We have Weiberfassnacht. And then there are the dialects, in which "Weib" often is indicative of a homely, loving relationship (-> bairisch, Swabian). Context matters.

[patates]

If you involve Swabian (which I could argue is more than just a dialect), everything goes out the window and you start again anyway.

[ralfd]

And “weiblich” is the commonly used adjective instead of the Latin derived feminine.

[cess11]

An example:

"Eine Göttin ist eine weibliche Gottheit."

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6ttin

[arrowsmith]

> Wein, Weib und Gesang

This saying exists in English too: "wine, women and song".

[bernds74]

Actually it means "sex, drugs and rock'n'roll".

[Helmut10001]

Sorry to be picky, but "Wein, Weib und Gesang" is not neutral. It reduces "Weib" to the value of Wein and Gesang, something only needed for pleasure.

[ahofmann]

You are applying logic and common sense from this century, to words of other centuries. This doesn't work, and never will. I think this is important, because a lot of people do this and nothing good comes out of it.

[watwut]

Are you claiming it was appreciative of women back then? It was expression about loud wild partying, the sort of that is annoying to everyone living on the same street as your beer pub is. The women who were present were not appreciated, they were look down at sort of tramps. A well behaved woman was not supposed to be present.

When you are casting it as appreciative of women because they are necessary for fun, you are applying modern idea that women present at a wild party says something positive about that woman. Back then, it suggested easy sexual availability and that was seen as a bad thing.

Edit: also in general, when people in the past were crass, other people in the past were offended over it. Even women themselves who accepted their role as god given would frequently get offended over hearing what they considered crass language. When women were supposed to be guardians of morality (and Germany had such periods), they would openly take issue with such statement. Because it was their expected role to be offended and to gently positively impact men (in a way that does not actually interfere with what he does).

[DocTomoe]

That saying comes from the "Sturm & Drang" age, the age of Goethe and Schiller, of the German Studentenschaft (basically 18th and 19th century patriotic fraternities). Yes, it is about partying. No, the women were not seen as tramps within that group, you are comparing 'polite society female standards' to a very different subculture. Do not fall into the trap to think that societies now or at any point in history were monolithic blocks of identical beliefs.

And we have plenty of literary evidence that the women in these young subcultures were not feeling being objectified either, such as:

Goethe (Werther, 1774): "The joy with which one sometimes unites with friends is also a very pleasant thing among women."

Also Mozart/Schikaneder (Zauberflöte, 1791): “A woman who does not fear night and death is worthy and will be initiated” - indicating they should be given access to (often occult) lodges, thus more than "entertainment", but an equal

Schiller (Intrigue and Love, 1784): “When reason bows, the heart opens.” (Schiller emphasizes the importance of feelings and passion, reflecting the era’s turn away from pure reason and strict morality, typical also of student life.)

Novalis’ (Hymns to the Night, 1799): "For woman is humanity’s mistress, And we give ourselves to serve her.”

Doesn't exactly sound like "Women are tramps unless they blush and faint at the idea of partying", does it?

[ahofmann]

This will be a bit difficult to answer, I think I'm unable to answer. First of all: it is very hard to talk about subtleties of meaning and interpretation in written language. Second: english is not my first language. So please interpret my text as amicably as possible.

"Are you claiming it was appreciative of women back then?"

I think it depends very much on context, who said it, where does it get said, to whom and in what type of voice etc. The saying "Wein, Weib und Gesang" as such could be appreciative towards women, and I think it could be said in a non-demeaning way, also in the times, where women had a much worse standing as of today.

I think this, not because I know anything about that time back then, but because I learned in the last decades how heavily the perception or meaning of words can change. And how very personal those perceptions are. When I went to school, we used words casually, that would be offensive today. And I know that my friends and I used these words without thinking twice if they're offensive, because to us, they just weren't. Others could be offended by those words at that time. But this is because other people have a different moral, or knowledge, or education, or age etc.

What I want to say with all that: we are almost unable to comprehend how people back then thought, talked and meant the stuff, they said back then. Because we are pretty much blinded by our own current perception and moral of things. For example, I tend to think amicably about the past, so my interpretation of stuff that was said in the past gets a "rose tint". Others tend to think that the past was bad, people were stupid and crass, and wrong. So they interpret things in a much darker light, than me. I can't say that anyone is more right than the other, because it comes down to very personal interpretations.

> It was expression about loud wild partying, the sort of that is annoying to everyone living on the same street as your beer pub is. The women who were present were not appreciated, they were look down at sort of tramps. A well behaved woman was not supposed to be present.

This is what you learned and interpreted about that phrase and time. For me this is a possible situation you describe, but there are also very different situations, where this phrase could come from. In my social circles, the word "Weib" was used in a very endearing, appreciative way towards women. Women used that word for describing themselves as strong, and emancipated. So the phrase "Wein, Weib und Gesang" could have a very positive connotation. That says nothing about what happened a few hundred years ago, it just shows how personal language in the end is.

[watwut]

> I think this, not because I know anything about that time back then, but because I learned in the last decades how heavily the perception or meaning of words can change.

Yes, but did you considered that original meaning could have been, roughly, "getting wasted and going to strip club"? That is how I have seen it being used in older books I read. It was not meant to be about women, it was meant to be about certain kind of men, certain kind of partying and lifestyle.

>What I want to say with all that: we are almost unable to comprehend how people back then thought, talked and meant the stuff, they said back then. Because we are pretty much blinded by our own current perception and moral of things.

We can get some idea tho, we are not completely helpless here. When you are making an assumption that it was positive, you are being heavily influenced by how you want it to be. Not even being influence by what it might mean today (fun sentence that means nothing), but by how you want the past people to be.

Reinterpreting past so that it appears more positive then it was is equally incorrect. And it is a bit me pet peeve, because it is frequently used to discount actually factually correct statements about history. It is used to make it sound more conforming to our norms then it actually was in practice.

> This is what you learned and interpreted about that phrase and time. For me this is a possible situation you describe, but there are also very different situations, where this phrase could come from. In my social circles, the word "Weib" was used in a very endearing, appreciative way towards women.

That is todays interpretation word and also of women breaking past social mores. In todays movies, a 19 century woman smoking cigarettes is cool. Because it is always an emancipated strong character dealing with tough guys.

But back then, women smoking cigarettes were scandal and looked down on by polite society. They were not emancipated, they were outcasts with all disadvantages that it brings.

[ahofmann]

I'm pretty sure, that we understand each other mostly but will strongly disagree on things, that are important to us if we engage further. So let's not do that :-) Thank you for your time, it was an interesting discussion!

[Helmut10001]

Yes, perhaps you are right. But then, look at who responded to my comment - all usernames suggest male companions. We are also now, not back then. Nothing prevents us from rethinking things from time to time.

[jraph]

Yes, sexism is not a new thing from today, and such sentences are witnesses of this. We might be interpreting stuff from the past with today's eyes, true, but that doesn't make the interpretation wrong. There are a lot of things we know now and didn't before. It's even totally possible we have reading keys that might have been unavailable back then.

We should not interpret stuff out of context though, but here I'm not sure taking the context in account would not make the point even stronger. I would be quite surprised about any context changing things for this particular phrase (but happy to be surprised...)

[KwanEsq]

Would "wine, friends, and song" do the same?

[jraph]

No gender is weirdly specific in your version.

Not sure about the reduction, but "Wine, women and song" somewhat assumes the point of view from an heterosexual male and could feel offensive just for this.

"Wine, man and song" would sound weird, but it should not sound weirder than the "women" version. That's because we are all used to the male pov assumption and that's the core of the issue.

And of course, to add insult to injury, the phrase will feel like the reduction the grand parent describes to many.

So I think we'd be better off dropping those old phrases in favor of things like your version, which doesn't have these issues.

Note: not a German nor an English native speaker so I might be missing some cultural subtlety that could make my POV a bit wrong and disconnected from reality.

[wilgertvelinga]

Why do you assume reduction?