Actually, "masculine and feminine", not "male or female". There's a subtle difference. One can be a masculine female, or an effeminate male, or a masculine sexless creature (hypothetically, something like Piccolo's species from Dragon Ball - they're asexual but masculine.)
If you went through a dictionary and scored all the words on a "male"/"female" and then a "masculine"/"feminine" scale the difference would be like 5 words.
Would actually be an interesting experiment to see if Germans would still call girls "it" if they had a do-over (das Maedchen, Es heisst Lisa, etc).
Actually, "masculine and feminine", not "male or female". There's a subtle difference. One can be a masculine female, or an effeminate male, or a masculine sexless creature (hypothetically, something like Piccolo's species from Dragon Ball - they're asexual but masculine.)
If you went through a dictionary and scored all the words on a "male"/"female" and then a "masculine"/"feminine" scale the difference would be like 5 words.
Would actually be an interesting experiment to see if Germans would still call girls "it" if they had a do-over (das Maedchen, Es heisst Lisa, etc).
seems i had one too many after-bbq schnaps.
what do you mean? 'das mädel' is correct, 'sie heißt lisa' would be correct.
not trying to be a cunt, i simply don't get the point you're trying to make.
I'm just basing it off "Das Mädchen ist klein. Es heißt Lisa ... would be grammatically correct and is still sometimes used".
So they have already changed "it" to "her" in some cases.
yeah now i understand what you're trying to get at.
silly though, i was forced to rewrite all my papers in university to be genderneutral 10 years ago.
there is no solution that doesn't envolve violence any longer.