It's the “agency of societies” that helped English lose its gendered nouns. One theory is that Old English society found them useless because there was overlap between endings, causing noun ending inflection to “collapse” into a single neutral form, which started in the North of England and progressed to the South.[1]
Societal changes are already influencing gendered nouns in Germany[2]. Some dialects of German (Niederdeutsch) also use de instead of der/die.
I'm a British national living in Austria. I've spoken with Austrian natives about the difficulty of learning German noun genders who admit that it feels increasingly old fashioned to them. The local dialect here slurs some noun endings so it's almost ambiguous, just as Old English once did.
There's no place for reinforcement of gender stereotypes via language (it is hard to find gender-neutral phrases in German - you are either a male programmer or a female one). Two languages that gender the same noun differently also have societies that use a different class of adjective (feminine vs masculine) for the word.[1]
To me it seems entirely reasonable to call gendered nouns “useless”, and to see them as a burden on a language and a society.
> "I've spoken with Austrian natives [...] who admit that it feels increasingly old fashioned to them. "
I can guarantee you, that your sample of Austrian natives is not representative of the majority of native speakers. Not even remotely. As a native speaker you will barely notice it, unless foreigners remind you of it.
> "To me it seems entirely reasonable to call gendered nouns “useless”, and to see them as a burden on a language and a society."
I can hardly imagine a force strong enough to change the way people speak to such a fundamental degree, as would be the removal of noun genders in German.
Advocating such force comes with a stench: It may have more todo with projecting power over the people you interact with and less with interacting itself. Which is why proponents of gender-neutral language in German often fail to not come across as snobbish. Which is why the only people in German speaking countries that speak gender-neutral are politicians or ideologues in academia.
Thanks for sharing - it's good to hear other opinions on this, and it's very likely the group of five or so people I was speaking to are not representative.
Thanks for taking my response the way you did and not as an insult (honestly, you're a rare exception these days on HN for not just downvote and leave as soon as the topic touches politics)!
>I can guarantee you, that your sample of Austrian natives is not representative of the majority of native speakers. Not even remotely.
Agreed. I find it hard to imagine how something can possibly sound old fashioned when there is no more modern alternative.
My German may not be perfect, but I have never heard anyone fudge definite articles in a way that makes them indistinguishable from each other (or drop them altogether).
> I find it hard to imagine how something can possibly sound old fashioned when there is no more modern alternative.
Exactly. Who'd be insulted by the moon being male in German and the sun being female? The sun, men or the moon?
Languages represent a form of continuous application of voluntary cooperation. Which is why almost no native speaker will think of his words he uses as an insult (either to a gender or that gendered word) but as a means to deliver information.
Using gender-neutral German in every day interactions will automatically make you come across affected. It is a linguistic Clinton-Thumb.
Societal changes are already influencing gendered nouns in Germany[2]. Some dialects of German (Niederdeutsch) also use de instead of der/die.
I'm a British national living in Austria. I've spoken with Austrian natives about the difficulty of learning German noun genders who admit that it feels increasingly old fashioned to them. The local dialect here slurs some noun endings so it's almost ambiguous, just as Old English once did.
There's no place for reinforcement of gender stereotypes via language (it is hard to find gender-neutral phrases in German - you are either a male programmer or a female one). Two languages that gender the same noun differently also have societies that use a different class of adjective (feminine vs masculine) for the word.[1]
To me it seems entirely reasonable to call gendered nouns “useless”, and to see them as a burden on a language and a society.
[1]: Lexicon Valley's episode on how English lost its genders is worth listening to: https://overcast.fm/+Noxtqh7oc. Dave Wilton's analysis is also interesting: http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/loss_of_g...
[2]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/will-new-law-for...