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Nietzsche on German: "Das Verb ist der Herr und die anderen Wörter sind die Sklaven." ("The verb is the master and the other words are the slaves.") An person

Nietzsche on German: "Das Verb ist der Herr und die anderen Wörter sind die Sklaven." ("The verb is the master and the other words are the slaves.") An personal observation I've noticed from living in Berlin: My German friends over a certain age (roughly 40), who are very liberal, tolerant, totally fluent English speakers, completely refuse to adopt "they/them" pronouns for their non-binary friends and insist until they're blue in the face that there's no reason not to mis-gender them. This still stumps me, because they are otherwise completely polite, elegant, and accommodating. A journalist friend of mine, when I asked him, says it's because German is so highly gendered as a language.

BrandoElFollito 3y ago
French is even more gendered and attempts to introduce a neutral pronoun basically failed. Now - English is for us a very different language that does not have declination so whatever construct there is inside is taken at face value. This is maybe why there are no particular problems using they/them for a single person. Maybe that the closer distance between German and English is one of the reasons for what you described? (wildly guessing)
- bloak 3y ago
  There is at least one fully specified proposal for gender-neutral German: geschlechtsneutral.net. I don't know whether there's anything like that for French. In both languages there's a lot more to it than just personal pronouns: there are also other gendered pronouns (relative, demonstrative, interogative, ...), nouns and adjectives. At least in German the endings on adjectives and nouns are fairly distinct so you can specify them separately. In French the ending can be fused with the root, so you have, for example: * Je suis nouveau (I am new; masculine speaker) * Je suis nouvelle (I am new; feminine speaker) The first-person pronoun "je" is the same for both genders, but the adjective is modified in a semi-regular way. What does a non-binary speaker say? If someone can point me at a fully specified proposal I'll have something to read this weekend! (Just joking: I already have lots to read.)
  - BrandoElFollito 3y ago
    What I meant is that in German there is die, der and das (neutral) which at least gives an idea of something neither masculine nor feminine. In French we indeed have "je" (I) and "tu" (you) that is non-gendered but as you noted the sentence still holds the genre. The idea to introduce "iel" (and contraction of "il" (he) and "elle" (she)) did not catch and I think I never saw it being used in practice. Now, your last point is very interesting - there is no way to say "I am new" in a non-gendered way in French (I have not seen anyone discussing this, actually)
lvncelot 3y ago
Huh, interesting - from the perspective of someone about ten years younger than the friends you've described, I often had the conversation how great the english singular "they/them" is (either for an unknown or non-binary gender) and how sorely it's missing in the German language.
WastingMyTime89 3y ago
You have to understand that the whole issue surrounding misgendering is hard to grasp when you live in a language where everything has a random gender. It’s hard to find it important when you use the feminine for a table and the masculine for a desk. The whole thing doesn’t really carry weight. Amusingly I think people make it such a big deal in English because it actually matters so little.
- bloak 3y ago
  I think perhaps the difference is that while in English it's people that have gender, in German it's the words that have gender rather than the things that the words refer to. Each of these words might refer to the same thing: * Mench (masculine): human being * Person (feminine): person * Geisel (feminine): hostage * Mädchen (neuter): girl The pronoun used to refer back to a noun is often the one that matches the gender of the noun rather than the gender of the person that the noun refers to. (French also has the feminine noun "personne", which I think you can refer back to with the feminine pronoun "elle".)
  - WastingMyTime89 3y ago
    I'm French and I have yet to meet someone who consciensiously distinguish between a thing and the word designing it. It's just that we are used to things having randomly assigned gender. That's how it is. A bit like how native English speakers are used to English pronunciation being divorced from how words are written.
expertentipp 3y ago
Why Germans listen until you finish speaking? They are waiting for the verb.
- mbg721 3y ago
  I was taught Latin as Caesar spoke it the same way--Caear victory upon the hill beside the trees won.
TAfresh010 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
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felixg3 3y ago
As someone who belongs to the described group, not in Berlin but in the liberal city Heidelberg and roughly 30, I can recognize that. There is no natural equivalent for they/them in the German language. Hence, I usually try to avoid using gendered language with people who request that. But I wouldn’t change the rules of grammar or standards of eloquent language to follow social fads.

BrandoElFollito 3y ago

French is even more gendered and attempts to introduce a neutral pronoun basically failed. Now - English is for us a very different language that does not have declination so whatever construct there is inside is taken at face value. This is maybe why there are no particular problems using they/them for a single person. Maybe that the closer distance between German and English is one of the reasons for what you described? (wildly guessing)

bloak 3y ago
There is at least one fully specified proposal for gender-neutral German: geschlechtsneutral.net. I don't know whether there's anything like that for French. In both languages there's a lot more to it than just personal pronouns: there are also other gendered pronouns (relative, demonstrative, interogative, ...), nouns and adjectives. At least in German the endings on adjectives and nouns are fairly distinct so you can specify them separately. In French the ending can be fused with the root, so you have, for example: * Je suis nouveau (I am new; masculine speaker) * Je suis nouvelle (I am new; feminine speaker) The first-person pronoun "je" is the same for both genders, but the adjective is modified in a semi-regular way. What does a non-binary speaker say? If someone can point me at a fully specified proposal I'll have something to read this weekend! (Just joking: I already have lots to read.)
- BrandoElFollito 3y ago
  What I meant is that in German there is die, der and das (neutral) which at least gives an idea of something neither masculine nor feminine. In French we indeed have "je" (I) and "tu" (you) that is non-gendered but as you noted the sentence still holds the genre. The idea to introduce "iel" (and contraction of "il" (he) and "elle" (she)) did not catch and I think I never saw it being used in practice. Now, your last point is very interesting - there is no way to say "I am new" in a non-gendered way in French (I have not seen anyone discussing this, actually)

lvncelot 3y ago

Huh, interesting - from the perspective of someone about ten years younger than the friends you've described, I often had the conversation how great the english singular "they/them" is (either for an unknown or non-binary gender) and how sorely it's missing in the German language.

WastingMyTime89 3y ago

You have to understand that the whole issue surrounding misgendering is hard to grasp when you live in a language where everything has a random gender. It’s hard to find it important when you use the feminine for a table and the masculine for a desk. The whole thing doesn’t really carry weight. Amusingly I think people make it such a big deal in English because it actually matters so little.

bloak 3y ago
I think perhaps the difference is that while in English it's people that have gender, in German it's the words that have gender rather than the things that the words refer to. Each of these words might refer to the same thing: * Mench (masculine): human being * Person (feminine): person * Geisel (feminine): hostage * Mädchen (neuter): girl The pronoun used to refer back to a noun is often the one that matches the gender of the noun rather than the gender of the person that the noun refers to. (French also has the feminine noun "personne", which I think you can refer back to with the feminine pronoun "elle".)
- WastingMyTime89 3y ago
  I'm French and I have yet to meet someone who consciensiously distinguish between a thing and the word designing it. It's just that we are used to things having randomly assigned gender. That's how it is. A bit like how native English speakers are used to English pronunciation being divorced from how words are written.

expertentipp 3y ago

Why Germans listen until you finish speaking? They are waiting for the verb.

mbg721 3y ago
I was taught Latin as Caesar spoke it the same way--Caear victory upon the hill beside the trees won.

TAfresh010 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

felixg3 3y ago

As someone who belongs to the described group, not in Berlin but in the liberal city Heidelberg and roughly 30, I can recognize that. There is no natural equivalent for they/them in the German language. Hence, I usually try to avoid using gendered language with people who request that. But I wouldn’t change the rules of grammar or standards of eloquent language to follow social fads.