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German Gender Distinctions | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5396 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 12 28 December 2011 at 9:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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When I was in high school (umpteen years ago), we were taught that there was a distinction between a male friend der Freund and a female friend die Freundin. My Bosnian friend (who claims to speak German as well as she speaks English) wrote me a lovely little Christmas note and called me mein Freund - which I found odd, considering I'm female. When I called her on it, she said she just dumbed it down to be like English, and that they don't do that so much anymore. Does German still have this distinction, or is it not used as much as it used to be? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 2 of 12 28 December 2011 at 9:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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The distinction is still in full effect. And the entire gender system would likely collapse before this changes, which won't happen in our lifetime. I've never heard of anyone using the masculine as a way to make something easier to understand.
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| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5396 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 12 28 December 2011 at 9:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks, Arekkusu.
I thought it was odd, especially since German is her second language and English is her third, that she would "dumb down" something like that. She's knows a little of my language nerdiness, but I don't think she realizes that I'm a grammar freak, too. She and I routinely email and write notes in an odd combination of Bosnian, Turkish, English, German, and Italian. Maybe she sees how much of a beginner I am in Bosnian and she assumes my knowledge is next to nil in all my other languages as well! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 4 of 12 28 December 2011 at 9:52pm | IP Logged | ||
When I learned German, I was taught that if you knew that you were referring to a female friend, you'd use Freundin. The idea of addressing a female friend as Freund never came up in any lesson nor have I heard any native speaker refer to a known female friend as Freund. If I were in your shoes, I'd actually feel mildly insulted by your friend's reasoning for "dumbing down" the German term to the point of mimicking the inherent gender neutrality in English's "friend". Unless it's become common and (often) acceptable to let "Freund" do double-duty in the years since I was learning German, why tinker with the grammar or lexicon in that way? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5396 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 12 28 December 2011 at 10:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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That's why I was asking, Chung. I was quite offended. She lived in Germany for seven or eight years, so I figured that she knew more than I did when it came to German.
It's possible that her German isn't as good as she claims. She was 15 when her family went to Germany as war refugees, and I'm assuming most of her time there was spent more with Bosnians than with Germans. It's also possible she doesn't realize I'm "into" languages, but you'd think anyone who knows a half dozen languages to varying degrees would know a little about grammar (both on my end and on hers). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 12 29 December 2011 at 12:21am | IP Logged | ||
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Your friend is apparently one of those persons who have reached a level where they can understand the things they need or want to understand, and who know just enough to carry out a simple conversation or write a message, but who then get complacent and fail to advance further into their languages.
In your place I would just make a mental note of this and be slightly more sceptical about her language provess in other languages - but you can't change her attitude, and if you otherwise have a good friendship it would serve no purpose to try to teach her German. But now at least YOU know that the Germans er extremely fuzzy about marking gender in all kinds of titles ... they even had to invent the word "Kanzlerin" for Angela Merkel, their first female chancellor. The Germans are also very careful to write "Dr." in front of the name of anybody with this title. The strange thing is that precisely the word "Doktor" also is used about women: "Guten tag, Frau Doktor Merkel". In Denmark we would probably say "Hej, Angela". Edited by Iversen on 29 December 2011 at 12:32am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| erinserb Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7197 days ago 135 posts - 144 votes Speaks: English* | Message 7 of 12 29 December 2011 at 10:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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Does anybody here have a good familiarity with this language? I know that it is actually an Indo-European language, rather than Arabic/Semitic group. I am looking at work in map librarianship/cartography. There is an acute need for those who have a proficiency in this language, particularly with the National Geospatial Agency in the U.S.
Not only that, it seems to be an intriguing language, with a unique script. If there are problems with Iran in the future (with the West), this language will be high on the list of essential/strategic languages. Does DLI have open-source coursework? Any help is always greatly appreciated. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| erinserb Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7197 days ago 135 posts - 144 votes Speaks: English* | Message 8 of 12 29 December 2011 at 10:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Users:
Please, please excuse the previous post - I didn't press the "new topic" button. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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