An Irony of Persian vs. German

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Khayyam
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An Irony of Persian vs. German

Postby Khayyam » Thu Nov 17, 2022 1:04 am

It's ironic that Germany, which is arguably the most "woke" and PC country of them all (at the least, no one is woker than them), is stuck with a language which has binary gendered thinking baked into its very core. Watching Germans awkwardly and predictably use asterisks to neuter their nouns is always good for a smirk or an irritated eyelid twitch, depending on my mood at the moment.

In Iran, on the other hand, virtually everyone speaks Persian (some as a first language, some as a second), which, from a gender-neutrality point of view, is a PC warrior's dream. It's as if it was designed from the ground up to be a safe space for Oregonian women's studies majors with half their blue hair shaved off. You can still be executed for protesting the hijab in Iran, but at least they're ahead of the curve on the whole pronoun thing.
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Re: An Irony of Persian vs. German

Postby cito » Thu Nov 17, 2022 2:54 am

Grammatical gender has very little to do with the sociological construction of gender (as in "Man" and "Woman"), it is a grammatical tool used for clarity and differentiation. Grammatical gender does not have to be "masculine," "feminine," and "neuter," but also "animate" and "inanimate," etc.

Perhaps it is irony, or perhaps it is just another one for the books against Sapir-Whorf.

In Iran, on the other hand, virtually everyone speaks Persian (some as a first language, some as a second), which, from a gender-neutrality point of view, is a PC warrior's dream. It's as if it was designed from the ground up to be a safe space for Oregonian women's studies majors with half their blue hair shaved off. You can still be executed for protesting the hijab in Iran, but at least they're ahead of the curve on the whole pronoun thing.


I also just want to remind you of this part of the rules.

Religion and politics: Some families have a rule that says, "No political or religious arguments during holiday dinner." This forum has a similar rule year-round, for much the same reasons. We have people here from all over the world, with incredibly diverse political and religious views, and we all get along much better if we avoid these subjects.

If the politics or religion is genuinely related to language learning, then you have a small amount of leeway—as long as people remain respectful and refrain from fighting. But if a moderator asks you to stop, please stop. You can fight about politics and religion on almost any other site on the Internet. This site is for language learning.

Flaming, personal attacks and inflammatory statements: Some people enjoy flaming, personal attacks, starting trouble, and fighting online. But many people dislike these things greatly, and they will leave the forum rather than put up with that kind of atmosphere. So given the choice, we choose to exclude the flamers, trolls and chronic jerks. If a moderator warns you to cut something out, please listen—if you don't, the next step is usually a temporary or permanent ban.

Also, certain kinds of personal remarks tend to turn threads into nasty fights. For example, please avoid making remarks like "Grow a thicker skin", "You don't have a sense of humour" etc, and if there's a conflict, consider using the Report or "!" button to contact the moderators. In particular, do not attack people or their personalities. You can argue about ideas and language learning techniques, but individuals are off limits. Besides, please avoid making non-language related statements that are likely to be disruptive and attract offtopic deviations or trolling. Please avoid loaded comparisons as well.


I understand that it was likely meant to be a joke, but to me it seems a little inflammatory. I think it's possible to be a little more mature about topics like these and avoiding generalizations. Also just seems like risky water being such a political topic. But also, who am I to quote the rules at you? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Re: An Irony of Persian vs. German

Postby Doitsujin » Thu Nov 17, 2022 6:19 am

Khayyam wrote:It's ironic that Germany [...] is stuck with a language which has binary gendered thinking baked into its very core.

Even though Sapir Whorf proponents like Lera Boroditsky claim otherwise, most Germans do not attribute feminine, masculine or neuter qualities to nouns just because they happen to have feminine, masculine or neuter articles. It's merely a language convention, like the "redundant do forms" in English or certain "redundant pronouns" in Romance languages.

Khayyam wrote:Watching Germans awkwardly and predictably use asterisks to neuter their nouns is always good for a smirk or an irritated eyelid twitch, depending on my mood at the moment.

BTW, according to recent surveys, most Germans are not in favor of using the "Gendersternchen" and other gender-neutral spelling conventions. For example: Weiter Vorbehalte gegen gendergerechte Sprache, MDRfragt: Deutliche Mehrheit lehnt Gendersprache ab. You might want to rethink your notion of "woke Germans..."
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Re: An Irony of Persian vs. German

Postby Saim » Thu Nov 17, 2022 11:09 am

Ignoring the inflammatory post about blue hair and such, one thing that I am personally curious about is how native Germans actually read the Gendersternchen. Whenever I see it my inner reading voice essentially just reads it out as identical to the feminine form.

In one German podcast I think I heard someone make it pronouncable by changing the stress: Ärzt*innen as [ɛɐtst'ɪnən] rather than ['ɛɐtstɪnən]. But I suspect that that's something that's only possible in affected speech, I don't really know if German phonotactics allows for this kind of mobile stress.
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Re: An Irony of Persian vs. German

Postby rdearman » Thu Nov 17, 2022 12:17 pm

Please stick to languages.
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Re: An Irony of Persian vs. German

Postby Dragon27 » Thu Nov 17, 2022 1:31 pm

Saim wrote:In one German podcast I think I heard someone make it pronouncable by changing the stress: Ärzt*innen as [ɛɐtst'ɪnən] rather than ['ɛɐtstɪnən].

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-Pause
['ɛːɐ̯tstʔɪnən]
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Re: An Irony of Persian vs. German

Postby alaart » Thu Nov 17, 2022 2:53 pm

Saim wrote:In one German podcast I think I heard someone make it pronouncable by changing the stress: Ärzt*innen as [ɛɐtst'ɪnən] rather than ['ɛɐtstɪnən]. But I suspect that that's something that's only possible in affected speech, I don't really know if German phonotactics allows for this kind of mobile stress.


Yes it's done with stress, exactly how you explained it. The difference is quite clear for me as a listener. As a speaker I'm not using it, but there are quite a number of people in university speaking like that.
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Re: An Irony of Persian vs. German

Postby tungemål » Thu Nov 17, 2022 4:24 pm

Potentially inflammatory, but an interesting language-philosophical question.

Comparing with Norwegian, which in principle has the same three gender grammatical system, it seems that German has tied grammatical gender much tighter to the sex of the person.

Norwegian did have the -in ending, but it was removed at one point.
So: pianistinne (female pianist) sounds oldfashioned. In Norwegian you're a pianist (masculine word) no matter what gender you are.

In German you need to specify: Anwältin - Anwalt. A lawyer in Norwegian is advokat (masculine) even if she's female. In principle German could reform to this system which would make a lot of things easier.
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Re: An Irony of Persian vs. German

Postby Sae » Thu Nov 17, 2022 9:43 pm

Gender in the human sense is social and psychological. But I think when we gain greater understandings of certain things, there's social changes and so on, sometimes there is a challenge for how language adapts to it.

But with the idea of gender being so integral to German, this is more grammatical gender, which as people has said is different. And another example is that Mongolian genders its vowels, but it has nothing to do with the gender of the person or to do with men or women, or any constructs of femininity or masculinity, it's just how it classifies its vowels for vowel harmony and they are actually another language that doesn't gender its pronouns.

So the masculine vowels are: aou, the feminine vowels are: eöü and neutral vowels are: ij. And then they'd get paired with suffixes based on their gender, for example, the present simple tense: -dag/-deg/-dog/-dög. So "uukh" means "to drink", we drop the "kh" and add the suffix, so you would use "uudag" if you were say "I drink tea" (Bi tsai uudag), whereas "to run" would end up as "güideg" in "I run every day" (Bi ödör bür güideg)

Though it is interesting to see how gender works differently between different languages. The same for pronouns, because if say, we compare Vietnamese, they don't just have gendered pronouns, they have neutral pronouns, but also base them on age and relationship. But these pronouns end up being pretty endearing and make you come off as quite friendly...or the opposite, because there is even a pronoun (which sadly I've forgot) that means the person has no respect for you. For example, you might use the pronoun "anh" to refer to an older male (without a big age gap), which is how you'd also refer to your older brother. But if you're younger than me, I might use 'em', which may also be used to refer to a younger sibling.
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Re: An Irony of Persian vs. German

Postby Khayyam » Sun Nov 27, 2022 6:08 pm

cito wrote:Grammatical gender has very little to do with the sociological construction of gender (as in "Man" and "Woman"), it is a grammatical tool used for clarity and differentiation. Grammatical gender does not have to be "masculine," "feminine," and "neuter," but also "animate" and "inanimate," etc.

Perhaps it is irony, or perhaps it is just another one for the books against Sapir-Whorf.

In Iran, on the other hand, virtually everyone speaks Persian (some as a first language, some as a second), which, from a gender-neutrality point of view, is a PC warrior's dream. It's as if it was designed from the ground up to be a safe space for Oregonian women's studies majors with half their blue hair shaved off. You can still be executed for protesting the hijab in Iran, but at least they're ahead of the curve on the whole pronoun thing.


I also just want to remind you of this part of the rules.

Religion and politics: Some families have a rule that says, "No political or religious arguments during holiday dinner." This forum has a similar rule year-round, for much the same reasons. We have people here from all over the world, with incredibly diverse political and religious views, and we all get along much better if we avoid these subjects.

If the politics or religion is genuinely related to language learning, then you have a small amount of leeway—as long as people remain respectful and refrain from fighting. But if a moderator asks you to stop, please stop. You can fight about politics and religion on almost any other site on the Internet. This site is for language learning.

Flaming, personal attacks and inflammatory statements: Some people enjoy flaming, personal attacks, starting trouble, and fighting online. But many people dislike these things greatly, and they will leave the forum rather than put up with that kind of atmosphere. So given the choice, we choose to exclude the flamers, trolls and chronic jerks. If a moderator warns you to cut something out, please listen—if you don't, the next step is usually a temporary or permanent ban.

Also, certain kinds of personal remarks tend to turn threads into nasty fights. For example, please avoid making remarks like "Grow a thicker skin", "You don't have a sense of humour" etc, and if there's a conflict, consider using the Report or "!" button to contact the moderators. In particular, do not attack people or their personalities. You can argue about ideas and language learning techniques, but individuals are off limits. Besides, please avoid making non-language related statements that are likely to be disruptive and attract offtopic deviations or trolling. Please avoid loaded comparisons as well.


I understand that it was likely meant to be a joke, but to me it seems a little inflammatory. I think it's possible to be a little more mature about topics like these and avoiding generalizations. Also just seems like risky water being such a political topic. But also, who am I to quote the rules at you? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


Yeah, you're right. I was trolling. I swear, when I started writing this post, I didn't mean to do it, but then I thought of the contrast between liberal Oregon and Iran, and the devil on my shoulder won. Sorry (to some degree--I'll bet I made a few people laugh).

But yeah, it doesn't exactly show great judgment to go on a forum where the one thing everyone has in common is one of my greatest passions, and something that can make you a bit of an outcast in the eyes of mainstream society if you're really into it, and make a shit-stirring, polarizing post. Bad move. Responsibility accepted.
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