Spelling council discusses special character: reckoning about gender star

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Zurich becomes the center of heated gender debate. If Susanne Brunner (51) does what she wants, the sex star should be banned from the Zurich city government.

On May 23, the Senior Vice President politician “Bye Gender Star!” launched the initiative. Sent, now it’s the turn of the city council. Brunner concludes: “Texts from the authorities should be clear, understandable and legible. Gender language, and especially the sex star, makes language clumsy and incomprehensible. The city of Zurich should not abuse language as a political tool.»

Brunner is garnering applause and grudges for his initiative. The applause comes from those who keep the language naïve and have for some time conjured up a “gender frenzy.” And evil from Juso President Nicola Siegrist (26). He asks on Twitter: “Would you like to write that you cannot use hyphens, apostrophes, and other characters in the municipal code?” Brunner plans to ban “special characters within individual words” from the Zurich city government.

Kim de l’Horizon (31) also lives in Zurich. The literary star received the Swiss and German Book Awards in 2022. In the bestselling “Book of Blood,” the phrases are obvious: “Most of the clients are retirees, construction workers, alcoholics.”

column in front

July 14 is about users, not customers. Then the German orthographic council meets in Eupen (Belgium). The Leibniz Institute for the German Language has previously analyzed gender-equality-appropriate forms of the term “user”. The result: In 2020, the spelling “User” was still before “User: inside”, but in 2021 and 2022 the colon was ahead. Unlike the term “user”, which assumes men and women, gender star and gender column seek to appeal to all gender identities. So are gender-variable people like Kim de l’Horizon.

The meeting of the senior language guards on 14 July could spark controversy. Had a taste of this nine days ago in the Editorial Board’s Gender Working Group.

According to information from SonntagsBlick, it is about a statement about special gender characters to be included for the first time in the official rule set (see interview, page 12): “Due to their special status as typographic characters, characters are outside of orthographic norms and do not correspond to current spelling rules and systematics. it won’t come.”

It is not yet clear which variant will be presented to the Council on 14 July. The council consists of representatives from seven countries or states: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Belgium and South Tyrol. The council has existed since 2004. At the time, seven states made the council the “central authority on spelling matters” to provide some form of damage capping for the controversial spelling reform.

What to do when gender discrimination in the exercise book?

When it comes to gender, the nine-person Swiss delegation is not on the same stage. Beat Steinmann is a legal editor in the Federal Chancellery and represents public administration on the Editorial Council. The Federal Chancellery emphasizes that gender symbols are not allowed in federal texts. “We cannot anticipate the debate and vote in the German Spelling Council.”

Knut Stirnemann (71) represents Swiss secondary schools on the council. He thinks the Swiss Federal Chancellery’s recommendations on gender-neutral language should apply to Swiss schools as well. “However, teachers should not mark spellings that contain special characters, such as the gender star, as a mistake, because students encounter such spellings over and over again today.”

Natascha Fischer (51), head of editorial “NZZ”, represents the Swiss Media Association. Grammatically, he takes a critical view of these grammatically unhelpful forms and cites “farmers” or “doctors” as examples.

“As a writer, I write how I want”

Nicoletta Wagner (64) is a former member of the “NZZ” editor-in-chief and represents Swiss schoolbook publishers on the highest German language committee: “A gendered language with special characters emphasizes differences. Makes it difficult to focus on key messages, emphasizes gender where it is irrelevant, leads to mistakes and misunderstandings, is often artificial and tiring.»

Writer Franco Supino (57) has a completely different view: “As a writer, I write as I want – everything else is censored.” The official set of rules should also allow for variants such as “capital I, gender star, or colon.” Everything else is “no longer up to date”. Supino emphasizes that she represents the “Authors Association, which also uses the gender star in its logo” on the Editorial Board.

The Swiss delegation also includes professors from the Northwest Switzerland University of Applied Sciences: Thomas Lindauer and Claudia Schmellentin. They are considered advocates of gender-appropriate language. “I continue to use the asterisk as I write officially,” Schmellentin told “Annabelle” in 2021. Specifically, he uses the exclamation point, which is a mix of inner self and gender column: “I like this form the most right now. Right now. I mean, it’s in flux.”

matter of style

Zurich linguist Noah Bubenhofer (46) is not a member of the Editorial Board. He finds it problematic that election campaigns are run with “anti-gender sentiments”. Reports of which universities and colleges penalize missing gender with grades turned out to be false. The young SVP agrees with Sunday’s opinion offering “free lawyers” to sue universities. No one reported who (or who) was disadvantaged in terms of grades.

Even if the spelling council spoke out against the gender star, Noah Bubenhofer would have no problem with that. For the linguist, the gender star is not a problem of spelling but a problem of style. “The editorial board is not responsible for the style.”

Source : Blick