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Comment by raxxorrax | Hacker News Reader

The German language is gendered, whether you like it or not.

Grammatical gender doesn't have anything to do with biological or sociological gender. The motivation behind these changes is the ambition to equalize societal problems of representation or something else. I don't really know the goal here exactly as nobody has defined it sufficiently to my knowledge.

But that is also technically irrelevant because the mechanisms of association between language and perception is also insufficiently justified. Probably even working backwards. Partly because it is a hot topic, but also because everyone reading these arcane terms will make the topic a gendered issue and not Covid for example. I think people that do that too frequently have mental problems and should not dictate language usage.

Under the line it does very well look that this language enforcement is arbitrary and mostly motivated by animosity to whatever.

But please, explain the problem again, what is the goal and how do these mechanisms improve the problem.

And the generic masculine is the de facto and de jure standard, whether you like it or not.

As a foreigner, reading German is tricky enough without having to bother with the gender police (on either side of that argument), the text was clear to me, which is what matters.

It hasn't been the de facto standard for decades now. Prime news sources like Tagesschau or Deutschlandfunk oder Zeit or SZ are doing it, publications of many academic branches are doing it etc.

The Tagesschau explicitly rejects gendered language: https://www.24hamburg.de/hamburg/ard-tagesschau-will-nicht-g...

More than two thirds of the Germans reject gendered language: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/gendergerechte-sprache-m...

The Bayrische Rundfunk even explicitly discourages employees from using the asterisk and/or double colon: https://taz.de/Oeffentlich-rechtlicher-Rundfunk/!5791847/

The Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) also reports that more than 65% of Germans disfavor gendered language: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/sprache-mehrheit-der-deut...

Tagesschau always uses both female and male gender where applicable, e.g. this article about the topic at hand: https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/uke-studie-corona-101.html That is the established form of gendered language, same as "Damen und Herren", i.e. they are not using the generic masculine.

No matter how you see it, what they do in this article is wrong.

Quote (headline):

> 93 Prozent der Studienteilnehmer in ambulanter Behandlung

So here are they talking about all participants regardless of gender or only about males? Surely they don't only talk about males right?

Then, just 2 paragraphs below:

> Die Studienteilnehmerinnen und -Teilnehmer gaben keine, milde oder höchstens mäßige Symptome zum Zeitpunkt der Infektion an.

So here they use female and male. What does that mean now? Have they excluded any non-female-nor-male participants? Surely they are talking about all participants again, right?

This shows the amount of mistakes and confusion that is currently created/happening in the German language.

https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/binnen-i-be-gone... :-)

While I generally support gendering and think it is important, I am not a fan of the extreme form of it either, but honestly stop exaggerating... no one is hurt by this text.

Ctrl+F ':' just shows 'keine:r' as the _only_ kind of weird example of gendering, the other instances are all very well established. It's only natural that people are overzealous with it at this point as the whole thing is fairly new and there's barely any good intuition for it.

They are absolutely _not_ well established, the Council for German Orthography explicitly discourages the use of asterisks, double colons etc. for gendering substantives. This university is disregarding the official grammatical rules to push its desired political agenda, which in the context of science is undermining its scientific credibility.

The council explicitly favored gendered speech ("Der Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung bekräftigt in seiner Sitzung am 26.03.2021 seine Auffassung, dass allen Menschen mit geschlechtergerechter Sprache begegnet werden soll und sie sensibel angesprochen werden sollen."), but doesn't want to be decision maker of the specific format. Straight from the horses mouth: https://www.rechtschreibrat.com/geschlechtergerechte-schreib...

Yes, within the established rules of German grammar. This allows constructs such as "Studierende" ("people who are studying"), "Mitarbeitende" ("people who are employees"), but forbids constructs such as "Mitarbeiter:innen" or "Student*innen", which deviate from the purpose of the double colon or asterisk.

> This allows constructs such as "Studierende" ("people who are studying")

Note that "Studierende" ("people who are studying") and "Studenten"/"Schüler" ("students") are technical not the same group. The latter are only part of the former group if they are actively studying (e.g. reading a book to study), at the moment in time. Once they stop, they continue to be students, but they are not "studying" anymore.

Hence, replacing "Studenten" with "Studierende" is or was (depending on who you ask) a semantical change to what is being expressed.

Seriously: try to focus on the content of the article instead of on the delivery, that would be much more productive.

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