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Another fun fact: for political correctness, an artificial gender-neutral way of referring to both male and female students has long been the "internal capital

by kleiba 11y ago

Another fun fact: for political correctness, an artificial gender-neutral way of referring to both male and female students has long been the "internal capital I" [1]: Studenten (male) + Studentinnen (female) = StudentInnen Recently though, the Green Party has gone a step further in Germany, and now uses in all of their documents the so-called "gender-star" [2]: Student*innen This is because it was felt that the version with capital-I only focused on males and females, but still excluded trans-sexual, trans-gender, and inter-sexual people. This practice has even led to a new verb in German: "to gender", i.e., to use politically correct gender-neutral language. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binnen-I https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binnen-I [2] http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/die-gruenen-machen-geschlechtsneutrale-sprache-zur-pflicht-a-1063228.html http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/die-gruenen-machen...

wordbank 11y ago
Spanish countries do it for years with "@" or "x" like "estimad@s" for "estimados" and "estimadas" at once. And Latin America is not very politically correct, it's just respectful for all genders.
- Shorel 11y ago
  In writing only, and very obnoxious as well for a culture that fights for their grave accents and correct language way more than their English counterpart. Otherwise tell me how do you say niñ@s out loud.
  - evincarofautumn 11y ago
    Hah, I just tried to pronounce it with coarticulation of [a] and [o], and it came out as [ɞ] [1]. /niɲɞs/ sounds totally alien. In reality, probably “niños y niñas”. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-mid_central_rounded_vowel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-mid_central_rounded_vowel
qubex 11y ago
Italian is similarly gendered (and actually lacks a neuter): consider the translation of “all”: “tutti” (male) and “tutte”, a particularly ironic case that amuses me as an attempt to be all-inclusive can inadvertently become exclusive when applied to groups of people. The standard politically correct solution is to use both “tutti e tutte”, but of late a trend is to use the asterisk next to remedy this (“tutt*”), which irks my regex-informed sensibilities no end because it might also match “tutto” (“everything”), though in context is fairly clear.

by kleiba 11y ago

wordbank 11y ago

Spanish countries do it for years with "@" or "x" like "estimad@s" for "estimados" and "estimadas" at once. And Latin America is not very politically correct, it's just respectful for all genders.

Shorel 11y ago
In writing only, and very obnoxious as well for a culture that fights for their grave accents and correct language way more than their English counterpart. Otherwise tell me how do you say niñ@s out loud.
- evincarofautumn 11y ago
  Hah, I just tried to pronounce it with coarticulation of [a] and [o], and it came out as [ɞ] [1]. /niɲɞs/ sounds totally alien. In reality, probably “niños y niñas”. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-mid_central_rounded_vowel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-mid_central_rounded_vowel

qubex 11y ago

Italian is similarly gendered (and actually lacks a neuter): consider the translation of “all”: “tutti” (male) and “tutte”, a particularly ironic case that amuses me as an attempt to be all-inclusive can inadvertently become exclusive when applied to groups of people. The standard politically correct solution is to use both “tutti e tutte”, but of late a trend is to use the asterisk next to remedy this (“tutt*”), which irks my regex-informed sensibilities no end because it might also match “tutto” (“everything”), though in context is fairly clear.