Der, Die, Duden: reflections on grammatical gender in German

Kyoko Canaway

The long read: Kyoko Canaway dives into the intricacies and difficulties of navigating German grammatical gender in a diverse world, and how people are trying to reconcile the two

The connotations of particular words can often be lost on non-native speakers, and over my Year Abroad, spent studying the organ at the Musikhochschule in Freiburg, I have often found myself floundering when asked to define myself within the strictly divided feminine and masculine descriptors of the German language. I feel that it is unnecessary to define myself both as a student and as a woman every time I explain that I am a ‘Studentin’. And yet I instinctively describe myself as an ‘Organistin’, emphasising my femininity in an area that can feel very male-dominated. Although these are only personal thoughts and could be dismissed as the uninformed reflections of a non-native speaker who has not studied gender in language, I have found myself faced with similar tensions in conversation with native German speakers, who respond to these questions of identity much more intuitively.

One evening at the start of my Year Abroad, I found myself at an after-choir social gathering with a group of older Germans. During the conversation, I was particularly struck by one of the Verger’s comments about his welcome at the start of church services. Instead of simply welcoming “liebe Christen” to the service, he had been told to welcome “liebe Christinnen und Christen” following complaints from female members of the congregation, a model of address that is extremely commonplace across many areas of contemporary German society. He, however, found this address problematic, not because of its explicit inclusion of the female members of the congregation, but because he felt that this listing of two sub-categories split the Christian society too divisively down a gender line, leaving no room for any other groups that did not define as male or female, or that simply did not want to be defined by their gender at all. His preferred solution was simply to stick with the term ‘Christen’, a generic masculine form, that while grammatically masculine, does not only address those who define as male, thus allowing all members of the congregation to feel included in this address, regardless of their gender identity. However, this generic masculine is often criticised by feminist activists since it side-lines the achievements, interests, and rights of women, as well as women themselves. In an attempt to challenge this, many women now define themselves with a specifically feminine form. Although I had always been aware of this as a concept, the personal implications of this became clear to me when I was playing a game of charades with two young German girls. One of them had to act out ‘Hundetrainer*in’ and when her sister guessed ‘Trainer!’ the genuinely irritated response was “Trainerin! Ich bin kein Mann!”.

Image: Goethe Institut

Although both of these approaches to gendered language clearly have different advantages, neither provides a perfect solution to all the problems raised by German grammatical genders. Although inserting a strong female voice into the vocabulary does increase the profile of successful women who hold various roles within society, whilst also broadening the prospects of young girls who can see themselves represented in the language, it relies too heavily on a society that is clearly divided down two binary categories of gender. The German authority on grammar and spelling, Duden, has recently announced that it is going to overhaul its online dictionary, inserting thousands of female words for job titles as independent lemmas rather than as sub-forms of a more commonly used masculine and providing suitable definitions for these new entries. This means that the term der Mieter will be defined as a ‘männliche Person, die etwas gemietet hat’, a definition that itself moves away from the dominance of the masculine form through its use of the feminine noun ‘Person’ rather than the masculine ‘Mensch’, thus framing the definition of this explicitly male tenant outside of an exclusively masculine grammatical context. There will then be a separate entry, die Mieterin, for a specifically female tenant. These feminine words are not in themselves new inventions; they have always existed as variations on the masculine form, but by inserting them as separate lemmas, Duden is emphasising the feminine form and thus by extension the feminine gender as the second absolute category that is available to describe a person. Furthermore, this narrows the referential scope of the masculine noun, removing the generic masculine from the language altogether so that masculine nouns can only ever refer to males. Although for an English speaker, it might be easy to dismiss this as an abstract change in a dictionary that will provoke very little reaction within the German speaking population, this is not necessarily the case. Duden holds an extremely prestigious place in the minds of native German speakers, a status that is not comparable to any English equivalent such as the OED. Unlike in England for example, many German households still contain paper copies of Duden and the simple assertion that “es steht so im Duden” is enough to end a discussion on whether a word really exists or whether a phrase has been used grammatically correctly or not. Due to the cultural significance of Duden therefore, it is unsurprising that this proposed change to the dictionary has led to a strong response across society. However, this response has been mostly negative.

Image: https://www.nelcartoons.de/2019/02/geschlechtergerechte-sprache-duden-bW6Pva

The main criticism faced by Duden’s announcement amongst the German speaking population is the pro-active stance that Duden is taking to shape language, rather than reflecting its common usage. The more conservative ‘Verein Deutsche Sprache’, along with the support of 12,000 people who have signed its appeal, have opposed this change, arguing that it is a ‘Zwangs-Sexualisierung’ of the German language (literally a ‘forced sexualisation’, but meant in terms of a forced ‘genderfication’; a conflation of terms that is telling in itself). The implications of this are that the German language is forced to comply to a set of rules that does not really reflect the way in which the majority of German-speakers actually speak German, thus failing to achieve a change in mindset and instead leading to a complication of language and an increase in confusion and misunderstanding. This attempt to lay out a clear set of rules in language is something that is characteristic and also perhaps expected of Duden, since it is by nature prescriptive, viewing itself as an authority on language rather than as an organisation that simply reports on linguistic change after it has happened. This tension between descriptivism and prescriptivism is an age-old debate and Duden has historically been on the prescriptive side of this dichotomy. However, the decision to change the status of words like ‘Mieterin’ from feminine sub-forms of a masculine main form to independent words in their own right is a change that has caused a much stronger public response than is usual. In introducing these feminine words as independent lemmas, Duden is institutionalising them as self-contained wholes, removing them from any masculine context and asserting their independence. The new weight that will be assigned to these words through this change is something that many German speakers are not yet willing to accept, and it is this apparently ‘extreme’ prescriptivism that has been the main cause of resistance to Duden’s announcement of this reform.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Despite this, I don’t believe that this should be the main argument of those opposing this divisive categorisation of individuals into two genders. This absolute definition of all of society into two distinct, gender-based categories is immediately problematic for anyone who does not define as either male or female, or indeed for anyone who is simply looking to move away from pre-existing and outdated social categories that may not reflect the truth of our society today. Although an article published by ‘Die Welt’ dramatically concludes by stating that „die geschlechtergerechte Sprache schadet nach jetzigem Erkenntnisstand offenbar niemandem“, they have failed to take into account the voices of all those who do not fall so easily into one category, reflecting the trend in Germany as a whole, where gender non-conforming communities are not yet so visible within society, or so carefully considered in societal discussions of equality. The most serious consequence therefore of Duden’s announcement is not its prescriptive alteration of language, but its failure to accurately reflect society, instead further ingraining other prejudices into society whilst dressing this process up as progress, thus delaying an advancement towards a language that truly takes into account all of its members, and can truly be said to represent the needs of all.

Why don’t we therefore stick with the generic masculine, denying the possibility of excluding anyone by simply using one term to signify all? Although to an English speaker, this might sound like an ideally convenient solution, the problem is that it is actually very difficult to implement without incurring unconscious bias. The generic masculine does have connotations to male figures, and can lead to a subconscious belief that women and genderqueer people can’t do a job that is inherently masculine by name, thus overlooking and undermining their importance within society. Many organisations do recognise this deeply ingrained prejudice. The University of Vienna, for example, published a guide to gender equal language, in which it clearly states that, even if it is specified at the start of an article that the neutral masculine form applies to all regardless of gender, this is still not enough to counteract the masculine prejudices that continue to be bound up in this form.

As well as overlooking women and genderqueer people within society, the exclusive use of the generic masculine would have a further negative impact on women by actively removing their means of linguistic representation. While there is currently no linguistic means of referring to genderqueer people as a group (something that is problematic in itself), the existing grammatical structures do allow for an explicit representation of women within the language. However, the exclusive use of the generic masculine would render this impossible, denying women a linguistic means of group identification and thus impacting negatively on their visibility within society. The continued need for a language that enables an active advocation of women’s rights can be seen in the 2020 Gender Equality Index published by the European Institute for Gender Equality. Germany ranked 12th in the EU with a score of only 67.5 out of 100, a statistic that clearly demonstrates that more must be done to promote gender equality within society. However, how can you fight for the rights of a marginalised group if there is no language to define them as a group at all? If the generic masculine were truly used to refer to all regardless of gender, it would not be possible to highlight the problems faced by women, since women would have lost their distinction as a group and would simply have been subsumed into a whole, a model that suggests an equality that is not representative of society. It can therefore be seen that the generic masculine fails on two fronts; not only is it practically impossible to use a grammatically masculine term without overlooking women and genderqueer people within society, but the use of a single term to refer to all would also destroy the means of linguistic representation currently available to women, thus removing them from the language altogether and decreasing their visibility as a group, in turn suggesting an equality and homogeny that is not truly reflective of society.

Groups who have recognised these flaws (including Duden itself, which has published two volumes on how to use “geschlechtergerechter Sprache”) are continuing to propose alternative models for a gender neutral language, suggesting the use of adjectival nouns or alternative suffixes to remove gender altogether. For example, instead of referring to ‘der Kunde und die Kundin’ you would refer to ‘die Kundschaft’ more generally, suggesting a large group of non-specific individuals. Similarly, ‘die Putzfrau’ would become ‘die Putzhilfe’, removing the definition of the cleaner as a woman. However, these terms, while gender neutral, are also potentially dehumanising and suggest that the people referred to are nothing more than non-specific types, or even nothing more than a means of fulfilling a service, raising further issues of the relationship between language and individual subjects despite potentially solving the question of gender.

Image: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wissen/geschlechtergerechte-sprache-nuetzliche-sternchen-brauchen-keine-amtshilfe/22646438.html

Although it is impossible to find a single, easy alternative to the gendered German language currently in use, I do believe that simply proposing and immediately implementing change in the hope that it will somehow be better than the current situation is a rash and unhelpful approach to social progress. Duden’s sudden announcement to introduce thousands of explicitly female titles into its dictionary as independent lemmas rather than as a sub-category of the more commonly used masculine appears poorly thought-out, and if carried out, will not solve the problem of linguistic inequality. Although women might benefit from this reform, this dichotomisation of language into two absolute genders will not truly reflect the reality of gender as a spectrum, thus addressing a small part of the issue of gendered language whilst leaving genderqueer people with no linguistic refuge, again failing to create an equal language that is truly representative of all its speakers. As this problem became ever more evident within German society, the dictionary would again have to scramble to introduce a hasty solution to this new linguistic challenge. To avoid this, a measured and thorough approach to potential alternatives to the current system is required in an attempt to enable a language whose textual evidence dates back to the early Middle Ages to accurately reflect the identity of all those living in the 21st century. This is a challenge that cannot be solved overnight, and so I hope that political and social groups will continue to consider this question of gender in language, taking into account the voices of all members of society regardless of gender identity in order to promote a language and means of expression that is truly reflective of its modern speakers.