Re: Homosexuality and gender identity

----- Original Message -----
From: "Henrik Theiling" <theiling@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2003 1:30 PM
Subject: Re: Homosexuality and gender identity


> Hi!
>
> Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...> writes:
> > that person. For instance, even a "mädchen" is "sie" in Standard German,
> > not "es"! :) ).
>
> Only for younger people.  It changed towards that pronoun in the last
> two decades or so.  Before that, you'd *always* use neuter pronouns.
> Nowadays, neuter pronouns tend to be used when they are very close to
> 'Mädchen' but feminine pronouns when the distance is larger.  At
> least, that's my impression.  I'd still say that correct, written
> German only uses neuter pronouns.
>
> Examples:
>
> Das Mädchen, das  ich sah, erkannte   ich.
> The girl,    that I   saw, recognized I.
> I recognized the girl I saw.
>
>     The relative pronoun is neuter. 'die' would be ungrammatical.
>
> But:
> Das Mädchen traf ich auf der Straße.  Ich erkannte   es/sie sofort.
> The girl    met  I   on  the street.  I   recognized it/her immediately.
>
>     Here, you could use both, feminine and neuter.  In written language,
>     I'd always prefer grammatical over biological gender.

Would you say

"Es ist ein Mädchen", or would you always say "Sie ist ein Mädchen"?

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