linuxdoctor
Infallible Persona
Joined: 23 Apr 2005
Posts: 1203
Location: Ottawa, Canada
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 Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 6:56 am Post subject: |
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| clpo13 wrote: | The gendered nature of German is making it really hard for me to learn.
Anyways, I'm afraid I don't understand the difference between die Leherin and das LeherIn (other than the gender, of course). I've never seen a capital letter within a word in German. |
The captialisation of words in the middle is a new one for me too. There are a whole lot of words like that, not only teacher. You'd think that perhaps they would use the term "teaching professional" instead, but in German that would be die Berufslehrer which is a masculine gendered word.
This was an (hopefully ill-fated) attempt by neocommunists in Germany at degenderfication of the language, especially with respect to the professions. In English, they got rid of words like "stewardess" and "waitress" replacing them with "flight attendant" and "server." The attempt within Germany took a different tack towards removing the gender (literally neutering the word; pun intended) from the words describing the professions themselves. The example of 'teacher' that you gave was a case in point. A male teacher would normally be referred to as der Lehrer and a female teacher as die Lehrerin. Most German masculine nouns follow the same pattern by adding the -in and changing the gender. To degenderfy (if that is a word) the profession, the neocommunists started by degenderfying the the word, thus das LehrerIn.
In modern times the teaching profession is typically filled with women and so the profession has become identified with the female gender. Professions such as these were targeted by the "political correctness" squad of the neocommunist intelligentsia so we had a spate of this sort of thing. The most notorious was when Angela Merkl became Chancellor of Germany. During the whole period leading up to her appointment as they worked out the großkoalition, the media was filled with news articles about what would be the correct title, considering that there had never been a female Chancellor before. Would it be Kanzler, that is to say, der Kanzler or die Kanzlerin? Feminists were aghast and out came das KanzlerIn. This went on from the end of the general election until she was actually appointed Chancellor.
The following New Year, it was voted the top newstory of 1995 (or whatever year that was). Can you imagine that? The top news story in Germany was about which was the correct word to use when referring to the new female Chancellor of Germany. Of course, in English she would be referred to as "Chancelloress" and nobody would kick up a fuss, except those wierdos I'm going to throw into death camps when I become supreme dictator of the world. Oops! You aren't supposed to know about that.
| clpo13 wrote: |
Whatever the case, I agree that being too politically correct isn't a good thing. I wouldn't go so far as to say dangerous, but it can be very annoying to change a language simply because some people find something offensive about it. |
I do go so far as to say dangerous because of the politics it espouses. The underlying neocommunist feminism that 'political' correctness is attempting to force onto people is most certainly dangerous and I forcefully object to it.
Of course, if I agreed with the political agenda behind 'political' correctness I might be singing a different tune. That is why when people observe that I am being 'politically' incorrect my immediate response is to say, "If you think that you have the wrong politics."
_________________
Misanthrope: someone who realizes that humans really are as stupid as they appear.
If you think I'm 'politically' incorrect you have the wrong politics. |
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