[lmf4lol]

Germany didn't have “gendered” language, until it was introduced some years ago. It’s a terrible reading experience and super annoying.

Imagine the sentence: The teachers explain to their pupiles that the managers work only for the shareholders.

it was

Die Lehrer erklärten den Schülern, dass die Manager ausschliesslich für die Anteilhaber arbeiten.

and it became:

Die Lehrer:innen erklärten den Schüler:innen, dass die Manager:innen ausschliesslich für die Anteilhaber:innen arbeiten.

It’s insane.

[mmyrte]

Forgive my ignorance, but it seems that there is more information in the "explicitly inclusive" form than the "implicitly inclusive" one. Doesn't the existence of the inclusive form allow you to explicitly use a non-inclusive form? So in this case

Lehrer being explicitly male and Lehrer:innen being explicitly inclusive?

I appreciate that this seems to be an emotional topic, but if people choose to use language in a new way, would it not be best to not withhold that information from you as a reader? Someone else wrote that it's like using an ad-blocker, but if I were to read an article, I would want to read it in the exact form someone wrote it, no? It's a bit like Americans auto-replacing "fucking" with "f***g" in their browsers to avoid an annoyance, but they lose information in the process.

[lmf4lol]

As a German, you don’t really loose any information. it was introduced somewhere in the 2020s and is not (yet) standardized - and probably wont be.

We Germans know that the generic masculine includes both genders by default. It’s how we use the language.

[pjc50]

When was it introduced and why? It seems in the opposite direction of travel from many languages, which have been trying to make more gender neutral options available.

(exception: Chinese didn't really bother with gendered pronouns until about the nineteenth century, due to the need to translate European languages, so some had to be introduced)

[lmf4lol]

German feminist are looking for a long time to eliminate the generic masculine form. But unlike English, which allows you to use they/them to refer to both genders - and which i kind of like - German doesnt have such an option.

So since my youth, multiple proposal have been put forward, among which the gender-star. Lehrer -> Lehrer*innen, Lehrer:innen.

It was never taken seriously, until we got a left wing government (2022 or so) and since then its getting more and more used. Especially in progressive media. Some even speak it. With a short break that represents the star or :. Sounds pretty stupid, but people do it.

In my mind, its the ultimate form of virtue signalling :-)

but hey. to each their own. I just prefer to ignore it if possible

[ben_w]

It was definitely introduced before that point, I saw people complaining about it back in 2018 when I arrived in the country.