The Perils of Gendered Languages
As some of you might have read in my profile, my native language is German. German is a highly gendered language, where every noun has a grammatical gender. We also have this wonderful thing, a.k.a. my pet peeve, called generisches Maskulinum which roughly translates to generic masculine gender. This means you use masculine nouns to address groups if you don’t know the genders of the group’s members, or if gender doesn’t matter. It’s a huge discussion here how to or even if it’s necessary to include different genders in both spoken and written language to not erase them. The if is where my pet peeve comes in. Funny thing is if a group of people is entirely female-presenting, you’ll use feminine nouns to address them. But here’s the kicker. If there is one male-presenting individual in that group, say hello to masculine nouns. I mean you can’t address a guy like a girl. You can’t do that. It’s like being called female is a bad thing, like it’s an insult. Suddenly, gender matters. But it’s okay to make all the females in the said group do the mental gymnastics to realize they are included. Oh, and don’t get me started on enby, genderfluid, or agender individuals. They just get lost in the mix so far, since German hasn’t a real gender-neutral pronoun and people aren’t things.
Good thing, it’s easier to address diverse groups in English...
English: “Hi, guys!”
W- wait... What?!
