Rants

I really hate political correctness - especially when it's about language. In my opinion, a better name instead of "political correctness" would be "lingo rape".



In the last few years, a misuse of the German language has cropped up that is understood as "political correctness" by (mostly) people who speak German but don't actually understand the language itself. These people simply don't realize that the German language distinguishes between between a natural and a grammatical gender. One example: "das Mädchen" ("the girl" in English). The natural gender of a girl is (of course) feminine, while "das" indicates that the word "Mädchen" is neuter - in a grammatical sense. English language doesn't really have this differentiation, which can be seen for example in the fact that German "der - die - das" translates to one single word: "the".



I simply hate it when "politically correct" people misunderstand a word's grammatical gender as its natural gender, and then explicitly add the feminine version of the word - well, the grammatically feminine version, but the naturally feminine version. <humor> That clearly discriminates against men, who are not represented by a naturally masculine version.</humor>



A second thing is the word "man" (which translates to "one" in sentences like "one has to understand the nature of philosophy"): this word is similar to "Mann" (which means "man" in English), and so certain people (especially from the ultra-aggressive feminist block) thought and still think that this actually means "man". Well, it does mean "man", but "man" like in "mankind". But still, a few people write "frau" ("woman" in English) or "mensch" ("human" in English), showing off their total lack of understanding and/or ignorance for the German language.



And the worst thing is: putting the above-mentioned facts on the table means that you are most likely getting censored in Indymedia because of "sexistic" comments. I am not sexistic. If there's anybody of anything that is sexistic, then it's the German language, not me. But why is it still used by "antisexistic" people? I know, that's polemic, but it had to be said. Let the flames begin.