Linguists protest as German dictionary goes gender neutral

Germany’s top dictionary publisher has provoked a storm by ending the use of masculine gender nouns to stand in for an entire profession.

Duden, which has been publishing dictionaries since the 19th century, will, for example, no longer use the term “Arzt” to mean “doctor” and instead include two entries in its online edition — one for a male doctor (“der Arzt”) and another for a female (“die Arztin”).

The firm started a process of updating the definitions of around 12,000 nouns referring to people’s occupations in the autumn of last year. Duden’s shift is a “step in the right direction” to equality in Germany’s boardrooms and parliament, wrote journalist Martin Zeyn.

Left- wing newspapers have already begun to use the feminine plural ending (- Innen) to demonstrate inclusiveness towards female members of a profession. However, many linguists said the definitions do not match how language is used in Germany — and therefore run against the dictionary’s role of transcribing, rather than editing, language.

“The generic masculine is a simple fact of the German language. In that regard I find the new definitions quite problematic,” said Ewa Trutkowski of the Free University of Bozen.

The Duden editorial played down the significance of the shift, claiming “the male forms were never gender neutral,” and “we are simply continuing the work of providing more precise meanings for words.” The debate follows controversy over a law drafted by the Social Democrat- run justice ministry in October that deployed female word endings to refer to all German citizens.

The interior ministry rejected the bill as “unconstitutional.”