this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
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Laittakaa meemejä tänne.
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Any chance you can help me understand why?
I took German in high school (which was a long time ago) - and yes, I can understand the moron part because if you speak poorly in any language that can happen.
But if I say die bleistift instead of der bleistift, how is that going to confuse someone? Bleistift is still the German word for pencil either way, right? The gendering of inanimate objects always felt very arbitrary to me.
I can explain: it's not, it's a lie. Using the wrong gender feels wrong but that's about it. It's a common second language learner mistake and it doesn't make you sound like a moron. With a little luck, you took a gender that's accepted in other regions of Germany (like die Email is standard while das Email is southern east I think). It's a mess.
Technically, there are ambiguities but not really like der Leiter the leader die Leiter the ladder and of cause you could find an example where this is really confusing, unless you are a bit patient and have some empathy.
In any case, I have deep respect for everyone who learns the mess that's my native language and nobody should feel bad for making minor mistakes.
To stay with people as an example: die Tänzer would mean plural right? But as an answer to a question, it might be confusing. Let’s assume you’re asked: „Wer war gestern Abend auf der Bühne?“. Assuming both participants know it’s an establishment with either several dancers or one female act, misgendering the female dancer trough omission of the correct ending would lead to confusion, since the false answer would be the same answer as the one being given by someone overwhelmed with gendering: „Die Tänzer“.
That is by definition confusing. Just because you can accommodate for it, doesn’t mean it isn’t initially.
About the moron part: that does really depend as well. I happen to work with a few people who are not German native speakers and tend to be very articulate in English. The way they often misgender common words in German really takes away from their credibility, since it happens so often. Doing it once or twice can be excused, but doing it often does not help you seem intelligent.
And there you are in one of the culture wars discussions we currently have in Germany. While progressives are using gendered nouns specificing which genders you are referring too (for example: Tänzerinnen and Tänzer – often abbreviated Tänzer*innen – if you had female and male dancers, Tänzerinnen if only female and Tänzer if only male), conservatives want to keep the old tradition of making a group of people male once a single male is included.
This has real world implications, though. There are jobs which are often gendered female – typically lower paid jobs like kindergarden teacher or nurse – and others are typically gendered male, like engineer or politican. There have been a couple studies with children where children were asked if their could think of taking a specified job. And if the job gender matched their gender, they were more likely to see themselves suitable for that job. And if you now remember that engineers are typically referred to as male and nurses are typically referred as female, this is one expiation on why Germany has one of the largest uncorrected gender pay gaps in Europe.