The Germans are tying themselves up in knots

[Onceinawhileuser]

An employee has brought a legal case against manufacturer Audi alleging that his rights are being breached by their mangling of language in company documents and correspondence.
The Germans already include male and female a lot - eg "We are looking for a "mitarbeiter/in" "(male/female colleague). This is supposedly not inclusive of "all genders", so they are now making things more complicated. See this sentence from Audi, which is supposedly inclusive of trans people by its use of the underlining symbol _ :
„Derdie BSM-Expertin ist qualifizierter Fachexpertin“

Apologies - MN is not accepting the horrifically mangled German sentence, which tells us something, and has auto-corrected it. It literally won't let me post the original sentence with its underlining symbols included to denote trans gender.

In the dispute between a VW employee and the company's subsidiary Audi about gender language in the company, the Ingolstadt lawyers have rejected a compromise. Removing the underlining from all mails, including attachments and presentations, was not practicable, Audi lawyers said on Tuesday in the trial before the Ingolstadt Regional Court.
......

The presiding judge suggested in order to reach an amicable settlement that Audi could "just write to him normally" in future.

Audi introduced gender language guidelines in March 2021.

www.msn.com/de-de/finanzen/top-stories/sprachstreit-audi-mitarbeiter-klagt-gegen-gendersprache-er-m%C3%B6chte-damit-in-ruhe-gelassen-werden/ar-AAYqQua?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=0cae904580fa4549c3c7f8ad6a089253

I wonder how long it will be before employers start to put clauses in new employment contracts, to protect themselves against this kind of litigation.

Interrssant. Danke für das Mitteilen! :)

Interesting. Thank you for sharing :)

I do wonder how gendered languages might have to adapt to all this. Will everything become neutral? That will really mess up the endings though. Or perhaps 'misgendering' is more of an English Language privilege, I mean problem.

There are ways round it. Up to now it's mostly been about male/female forms: use of the so-called Gender-Sternchen (so KollegInnen - with a miniscule pause where the comes in the spoken language). So many of the (mostly) broflakes don't like that and can't see why we can't carry on using the male form "and of course females should consider themselves included".

Plenty of us have started using only the female form with an * leading to the explanation that everyone should feel included but for ease of writing and flowing language we'll only use the female form. Surprisingly my dinosaur of a (middle aged middle class white) boss is happy with this.

In the past if have also used plurals (which usually looks male) or the diminutive form (so Mädchen - girl instead of women, which i loathe) but is the neutral gender.

It's going to be interesting where the language goes from here. Nowhere easy to pronounce i guess, with ever longer sentences.

A question for German speakers (and forgive me, because my German studies stopped 40 years ago).

How do non-binaries like people to say "they:them"? Do you use "neuter"?

How would you say "they are a good student", for example?

It'll impress my teen daughter if I know.

There are several ways, apparently, but I've only encountered one and that is where we would have er/sein (he/his) or Sie/ihr (she hers) they use Die*/deren (they/theirs)

*pronounced Dee

?? The (feminine definite article) / whose (belonging to masculine nouns) ??

How does this make sense? (I know, I know, it doesn't, any more than the rest of this guff, especially in grammatically gendered languages.)

The presiding judge suggested in order to reach an amicable settlement that Audi could "just write to him normally" in future.

A lonely voice of sanity! Just exted that to include writing normally to everyone, and anyone who is too special to use normal language can add their own special words for themselves.

or Sie/ihr (she hers) they use Die*/deren (they/theirs)

Sie can mean she and they as well as the formal you; it depends on context. With a capital letter (Sie), it's the formal you (like Vous in French). So sie (without the capital letter,) could be used as "they", for both sexes, as well as ihr (their, hers). Confusing, I know!

(that was a rogue capital S in there, sorry)

"Die" is often used in umgangsprache though to mean this, that, it, whatever you want it to mean, so it's not much of a stretch to use die/deren. Some of the DCs friends use it, and it feels fine when we're all talking.

Plenty of us have started using only the female form with an leading to the explanation that everyone should feel included but for ease of writing and flowing language we'll only use the female form.*

My impression is that the * is now being replaced by '-ende' (Mitarbeitende, Studierende, Kaufende) which really annoys me because, gramatically, it just doesn't make any sense.

A question for German speakers (and forgive me, because my German studies stopped 40 years ago).

How do non-binaries like people to say "they:them"? Do you use "neuter"?

From what I've seen, some people are now using 'xier' for they / them. Apparently there are other neo-pronouns one can use instead (such as nin, sier, sif or dey), but xier is the only one I've actually seen in use (by blue-haired people on Twitter or TV, never in the wild).

My impression is that the is now being replaced by '-ende' (Mitarbeitende, Studierende, Kaufende) which really annoys me because, gramatically, it just doesn't make any sense.*

I can't get excited about it - we're seeing German change before our very eyes, I'm finding it quite exciting.

I successfully headed off my boss handing me some work today because he (and it surprised me because he usually is very careful about using a Gendersternchen, he takes the piss) only used the male form and didn't say "of course it includes the women". And because he's an arse about it, taking the piss, this time he accepted it. Net time he'll use inclusive language just so i can't do that again

Most job adverts I see here seem to say M/W/D which is männlich (make) weibliche (female) and divers - it's always surprised me that they even specify sex at all

In France almost all job ads have "H/F" written after the title, indicating that the job is for either a man or a woman.

I'd love to see this practice disappear actually, because it shouldn't need stating. I wonder whether some angry non binary person will be the one to kick up a fuss.

Wouldn't it be easier if we all spoke Basque? It has 2 genders - animate and inanimate? Or Finnish which has no genders?

it's always surprised me that they even specify sex at all

oh don't get me started... i am constantly complaining about the ads on trains, especially at this time of year when they're trying to attract apprentices. Train driver - m/w/d - all the pictures are of men. Onboard bistro - m/w/d - all the pictures are of smiling women. Backroom staff - m/w/d - you have to be like a magic fairy (Bürofee) - i actually wrote to them about that one.

Danish has common and neuter. Animate and inanimate makes more sense.

Dutch has - technically - masculine and neuter! It's not really discussed in terms of gender though. The thing is, in "gendered" languages, the naming of the categories as "male" and "female" has virtually (and some times absolutely) nothing to do with male and female as biological categories. They could be called "hot" and "cold" words or designated by numbers or a letter. So this whole discussion is beyond ridiculous in these countries.

Luckily in France a judge ruled that children need to get a proper understanding of their grammar so it has to be taught traditionally as altering anything stands to add unnecessary confusion.

So far, the most common suggestion by people considering themselves non-binary is for others to keep repeating their name instead of using 3rd person pronouns at all. Neuter is never considered acceptable as it's commonly applied to animals or inanimate objects. Neo-pronouns are only just beginning to creep in.

A reply to Madcats:
In German singular, you have the pronouns 'er' (masculine), 'sie' (feminine) and 'es' (neuter), corresponding to the English he/she/it.
In German plural, just as in the English language, gender is neutralized: there is only one pronoun. In English, this is 'they', in German, though, it is identical with the singular feminine pronoun, thus 'sie'.
To diffentiate the two, you have to look at the verb:
sie schläft - she sleeps.
sie schlafen - they sleep.
That means that if you used the plural pronoun in German, you'd always have an ambiguity between a feminine singular and a plural reading and therefore this is done in Germany. There have been attempts, as mentioned above, to invent new pronouns, such as 'xier', 'xie', 'nin', 'sier', 'sif', 'per' or 'dey'. Since these are considered (a) comical and completely stupid by the vast majority of Germans and (b) a undue intervention in the language they are not used (apart from the most dyed-in-the-wool proponents of whats called here 'gender appropriate language'). Their use is also hindered by the fact that you have a rather complex inflexional system in German which makes the integration of new words difficult. For more info, see Genderneutrale Pronomina.
Since the gendered language debate in Germany, though, is centered around what the authors above have discussed, i.e. how to neutralize nouns (or, to be more explicit, how to overcome the generic masculine that we have in German), this topic has not had the same impact as in English speaking countries.
I hope this helps (and you can impress your daughter).

I have seen M/W for as long as I can remember looking at job adverts (about 25 years), this was done so women would not feel excluded if job titles were generic masculine.
A few years ago I leafed through the news paper at my aunt's and stumbled across the "d". Asked her what it meant and she explained "divers" so people with the "third sex" (drittes Geschlecht) would not be excluded.
My eyes were rolling quite a bit.

What I find really irritating is saying "the studying" (Studierende) instead of the "the students" or "the working" (Arbeitende) "the workers" or similar.

The whole gendering completely by-passed me in my use of German, but I see it all the time, whether it's with the * or a capital I.

I always thought that Germany/Austria is far behind the UK in the trans debate and that was true when I last lived there, which was in 2017. They seem to have caught up damn quickly. My 12 year old Austrian granddaughter is now completely caught. It is heartbreaking.