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Comment by Jamustico | Hacker News Reader

Newspeak?

Quite the opposite. It allows you to express more, not less.

Yes, but part of the idea still stands. Changing the language in order to fit an ideology.

In case of 1984, words were removed, in this case words are being added, but I bet that they plan to remove gendered words if this gets through.

As a native English speaker who took German as a kid, I was always perplexed by gendered nouns. Why are fruit feminine and pencils and pens masculine? Is it because writing instruments were the tools of men or because they're phallic? Why is lawyer feminine? Is it a form or derision? Best I recall (and can find), it's arbitrary and I would assume, like many things in our world, they were chosen based on some gender association that often boils down to misogyny. German has neutral articles as well.

While I wouldn't spend my life chasing this debate, as an outside observer, I can't understand why normalizing on "das" would be a problem for 99% of the things and moving forward from there. Language evolves and if we can evolve it to be more inclusive, why not?

Imagine someone comes along and insists that your native language is discriminative on something totally innocuous. Like, say, “a” vs “the”. Dunno, because you can make some nouns special this way. It lets you say “the man” and “a woman” which shows, allegedly, disrespect to one of the genders. You must integrate them into one “tha”. Never mind you lose a key mechanism for expression: surely, you’re not sexist, are you?

You may find it a bit silly or ridiculous, but perhaps, like other people, you may find the very suggestion offensive: that unless you put an axe to the language you speak, according to someone’s half-baked ideas, you’re a bigoted misogynist.

Languages evolve, we change bits to better fit the zeitgeist and that’s normal. But these “though shalt change your language because I say so and I know better” wars are ridiculous.

Why can't gendered nouns stay as a cultural curiosity?

To me the Moon will always be feminine and the Sun masculine, even if they're not gendered in English. So what? People that are bothered by this duality tacitly imply that one of these gender is inherently worse than the other, and speaks volumes about their assumptions and views of the world.

So what if fruit is female and pencils are male? How is that misogyny? Are fruits "weak"? Do they have "emotions"? No, saying it's rooted in misogyny is cultural and historical revisionism pushing an agenda.

Gender activism tries to make society more moderate and inclusive by taking an extremist position: culture will eventually settle towards a more moderate, but still progressive view of the matter.

I expect society to be more inclusive after these efforts, but I honestly do not want nor hope these extremist views to actually take hold. They're just a means to an end. I accept them in the hope they make a better world, but viewed by themselves they're just posturing bullshit.

Moon and sun are the opposite in German. It is arbitrary in different languages and the discrimination angle is just wrong.

> Why are fruit feminine and pencils and pens masculine? Is it because writing instruments were the tools of men or because they're phallic? […] it's arbitrary and I would assume, like many things in our world, they were chosen based on some gender association that often boils down to misogyny

A suggestive and imaginative theory, but wrong. Reality is always much more boring. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29043881>

Think of it as a checksum.

As a non-native German speaker, I sometimes struggle with understanding speech (especially with thick accents). Knowing the gender lets me narrow down the possibilities of what a word might be, when I don't hear it all the way.

The grammatical genus doesn't have anything to do with sexuality. It is arbitrary otherwise and difficult to learn, true. Lawyer is masculine in German, plurals are always feminine.

> they were chosen based on some gender association that often boils down to misogyny

No. They were explicitly not chosen for this reason. There are some exceptions maybe, but the whole debate is based on false assumptions.

There are languages which don't do this of course. I don't see any problems that affect one country but not the other. No.

In the sense that henceforth we will no longer be allowed to use Oldspeak gendered pronouns - it is clearly mandating (in this particular context) that we adopt a more restricted form of expression.

yay... let's quote a book without understanding it. There should be a school of thought for this, I will sponsor it. Let's call it the Pseudo intellectual Institute of Shitty Quotes.

I have read the book. In the case of 1984, they remove words. In this case they add words in order to fit an ideology. Go back to reddit Mr. Not Pseudo Intellectual

In 1984 the usage of works gets restricted by a totalitarian government, now in the real world written and spoken language evolves trough discourse even with people like yourself. I know you read the book... I said you didn't understand it.

Sorry, didn't know you were a 1984 connoisseur. You didn't even refute my argument "In this case they add words in order to fit an ideology". All you added was that you knew the book and understood it more than me.

You can gender whom ever you want as whatever you want without repercussions from your government. You can add words you can retract words in German and the government will not care, will not incarcerate you or will do you physical or financial harm. There is no argument except that you mistook math class with language study. There also is only one exception the denying of the Holocaust I hope we are at least on the same page about this one.

This is literally about bending reality by amending language. So a newspeak comparison is exactly right.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com