It is real. People have gotten mad at me for saying the 1 general (in my opinion in that case not-gendered) word instead of the slight pause and adding *innen. It’s quite difficult for non-native speakers to get used to it.
Meanwhile, in Dutch language, many female doctors, bosses, directors etc all prefer to be spoken to with the general “male” word, because they prefer to be spoken to on an equal term as their male colleagues and for the difference not to be made. Witnessing Germanic languages growing apart a tad further I guess.
In English we have a few gendered professions (waiter/waitress, actor/actress) and I feel like most people.lean towards the “male” term as the general term as well. In general it’s fine to call anyone an actor or a waiter but it would be weird to call a male actor an actress.
“actrice” is one the few in dutch where it does still seem to matter to use the female version! Calling a female actress the male “acteur” would weird out a room i think. But if it’s a group of both male and female people, and you use the general “acteurs” it would be fine i think and “actrices en acteurs” would be fine too. While in german, only the “schauspielerinnen und schauspieler” of “schauspieler*innen” would be okay and just saying “schauspieler” to a mixed group would be very frowned upon.
I get the idea, i hate the implementation. I think it would be easier for everyone to just cancel one word and call everyone the same, instead of doubling down on everything, it’s doable in writing, but it’s a real hassle in talking.
It is also quite difficult for native speakers. I have nothing against the general idea, but the “:” solution is just shit. Destroys the whole flow of the language. Takes me out of a conversation/speech/whatever every time somebody uses it.
Language is a tool and is shaped and molded to be used by its bearers. You’ll get used to it and it’ll come natural to you. If it’s important to you, you’ll get there.
Btw: the slight pause you insert between the main noun and the gendered suffix is called a glottal stop. You do it without thinking about it for a bunch of words already. Consider “Spiegelei”. Notice the pause between “Spiegel” and “Ei”? Apply this same principle whenever you want to gender appropriately and you’re golden.
Sorry to hear that. For me it’s the other way round. While I nearly always use the generic masculine form when speaking directly to others that never happened to me. Then again at work it’s forbidden for me to gender in official postings since I did that once.
What I totally get is that online it’s a totally different experience and no matter whether you gender or don’t you may as well drop yourself into a vet of acid.
it was in real life and the person calling me out was a hardcore feminist. So yeah, the construction is being used to call out non-native speakers on their so-called ideological bias against feminists, or so it felt :s It weirded me out and continues to do so. To me it feels more inclusive to call everyone, male, female or non-binary, by one and the same word, instead of focussing on ones reproductive organs while talking about their profession or hobby or whatever.
Same in Spanish. We can say programadores (male gender plural form) to refer to a group of programmers, regardless of gender, as the standard says. However, in recent years it’s become common to say programadores y programadoras (male plural and female plural) or programadoras y programadores (female plural and male plural). Using only the male gender causes many people to complain, or so I’ve heard.
Is “dokter” even a male word? What’s the female version “dokterin”,“dokteres”?
