'Like Monty Python is back': Linguists blast Cambridge's bid to teach German using gender-inclusive words
25 October 2022, 20:33
Linguists have hit out at the University of Cambridge's decision to drop teaching gendered German.
The language has some words which are masculine or feminine and the male form is usually used for plurals.
But undergraduates have been told to use "inclusive language" and use "gender- and non-binary-inclusive language" when referring to students or colleagues.
When writing, students can make feminine nouns unisex by adding an asterisk before the suffix – which is non-standard and referred to as a "gender star".
The Times reports that course managers noted "in extended German texts grammatical structures can inhibit inclusivity… relative and other pronouns, for example, are obligatorily marked for grammatical gender, so going gender-free is difficult to achieve".
And Cambridge acknowledged that "gender as a grammatical category is part of native speakers' language competence, and overlaps only partly with gender as a real-world phenomenon and a lived identity".
Linguists attacked the idea, warning that students could appear foolish when they interact with native speakers.
The German Language Association's Oliver Baer said he and his colleagues felt their tongue was being abused and said: "My first reaction is it's like Monty Python is back.
"It's a minefield and I would hate to recommend to any Englishman to have to go through the details of all that.
"Although it's accepted, it's not respected to speak like that in Germany. I'd never pay £9,000 [tuition fees]… I wouldn't recommend that to anybody."
He added: "Language doesn't evolve from the top down. Maybe you can do that in North Korea, but not in our society."
Mr Baer suggested getting rid of the implied maleness in some forms of the language.
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"If a non-native speaker came and tried to use gender-neutral German while on holiday here I think they would stand a good chance of making a fool of themselves," he said.
"Fortunately we have no German word for 'woke', so we borrow it from the English."
But the head of B2B didactics at Babbel, a language learning service, warned against confusing gender in grammar with gender in general.
"We have masculine and the feminine - if you would talk about any kind of professional, in German, if you use one single word - you have to decide whether you're talking about a male teacher or a female teacher. There is no way in the German language to have it as neutral, as it is in English," Maren Pauli said.
A spokesman for the University of Cambridge said: "As it clearly states on the faculty of modern and medieval languages and linguistics website, 'students are free to choose for themselves how to engage with inclusive language when speaking and writing in German'. To suggest otherwise is entirely wrong."
