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Tag Archives: Gendersternchen

German ‘Language Police’ And Gender Neutrality Posted by on Feb 9, 2022

Guten Tag! Recently I wrote about the German Unwort des Jahres (‘Non-word of the year’) 2021, which you can read about here. I mentioned in that post that the runner-up was die Sprachpolizei, which literally means ‘language police’. This word was used in 2021 to defame those who were trying to make the German language…

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How do you pronounce the gender-neutral German Gendersternchen? Posted by on Jul 15, 2021

gender-neutral gendersternchen pronunciation

Gender-neutral language is being used more and more. Some cities have started using it, the University of Leipzig decided to use the weibliche Form (feminine form) as the basic form instead of the männliche Form (male form). This led to some “erhitzte Gemüter” (raised tempers). In Germany, the discussion about the use and necessity of gendered language is…

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Gender-Neutral German: Das Gendersternchen Posted by on Dec 18, 2019

Guten Tag! You may have seen words like this in German: Einwohner*innen, Mieter*innen, Lehrer*innen. What’s the little star in the middle all about? This is called the Gendersternchen, and it’s what we’re going to talk about in today’s post. As language learners soon find out, German is a very gendered language. That means, not only…

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