German Historical Linguistics 2026, 6: Gender and Language (Horst Simon)

Overview

Horst Simon examines three historical and contemporary intersections of gender, grammar, and social norms: gendered forms of address in Early New High German, neuter pronouns for mixed groups in Old High German, and current German debates over inclusive language. Across examples from German, French, Italian, Arabic, and Chinese, he argues that grammatical choices acquire social meaning through politeness, gender expectations, and changing norms—and that grammar, institutions, and public attitudes all shape whether innovations spread.

Key takeaways

In 17th-century German, feminine grammatical agreement could address men politely because the pronoun referred back to feminine honorific nouns such as equivalents of “Your Majesty,” not directly to the addressee’s gender.
Old High German could use neuter plural pronouns for mixed-sex groups, while traditional French prescribes masculine plural agreement even for groups containing many women and one man.
Generic masculine forms can shape mental representations: psycholinguistic studies cited by Horst Simon find that forms such as Studenten make male referents more salient than women or people of other genders.
Inclusive-language innovations face both grammatical and social barriers: German pronoun changes interact with possessives and adjective agreement, while public norms and political identity affect adoption.
Chinese illustrates how writing can create a gender distinction absent from speech: Mandarin tā is neutral orally, but conventional characters distinguish 他 and 她; mixed Chinese-and-pinyin writing offers a nonbinary workaround.

Chapters

0:00 Horst Simon’s Three Historical and Social-Linguistic Case Studies

Henrike Lähnemann introduces Horst Simon, professor of historical linguistics at Freie Universität Berlin, and frames gendered language as relevant across historical periods.
Simon organizes the lecture around Early New High German address, Old High German references to mixed groups, and contemporary debates.
The three topics connect through questions of appropriate, polite, and socially meaningful language.

5:08 Early New High German Politeness and Feminine Forms of Address

Simon focuses on Early New High German, especially the 16th and 17th centuries, when third-person singular forms could address one person politely.
Nominal honorifics such as forms equivalent to “Your Majesty” or “Your Grace” were grammatically feminine, so their anaphoric pronouns could be feminine regardless of the addressee’s gender.
Examples from 17th-century German writing show feminine pronouns used toward men, including a servant addressing King Charles I in a drama by Andreas Gryphius.
Over time, address pronouns became more closely aligned with the addressee’s perceived social gender rather than only the grammatical gender of an honorific.

10:46 Italian and Arabic Show How Gendered Address Signals Social Meaning

Northern Italian polite lei derives from feminine honorific expressions and became a polite singular address form regardless of the addressee’s gender.
Some northern Italian dialects later distinguish masculine and feminine forms of third-person singular address.
In Tunisian Arabic, using a feminine singular form can index urban sophistication; in Lebanese Arabic, it can insult a male adversary by symbolically feminizing him.
In Yemeni Arabic, a masculine plural form can respectfully address older women, showing that gender mismatches can express deference as well as aggression.

15:29 Old High German Used Neuter Plurals for Mixed-Sex Groups

Old High German had three third-person plural forms associated with grammatical gender; examples from the 9th-century Old High German Tatian use a neuter plural pronoun for groups including men and women.
The practice appears in references to mixed pairs and groups, while French traditionally uses masculine plural agreement for mixed groups.
A correction or erasure near one neuter form in the St. Gallen Tatian manuscript may point to variation in the system.
Simon compares the historical pattern with Bavarian indefinite expressions that use neuter forms to refer to people regardless of gender.

20:53 The Generic Masculine, Markedness, and the Male-as-Norm Principle

Simon identifies gender-inclusive language—also called gendern by supporters and sometimes gender-gaga by opponents—as a major contemporary German language controversy.
Traditional French grammar prescribes masculine plural agreement for mixed groups, even when a group contains many women and only one man; German grammar has comparable generic masculine forms.
The usual explanation invokes markedness: masculine is treated as the unmarked or general category, while feminine is marked as specific.
Simon connects this pattern to the broader “male as norm” principle, citing male-centered design in crash-test dummies and medical testing.
German feminine -in historically could mark a woman’s association with a male occupation-holder, before becoming a more direct marker of a woman who performs that occupation.

29:13 Inclusive German Forms and the Search for New Pronouns

Psycholinguistic research suggests that generic masculine plurals such as Studenten can prompt readers to imagine more men than women.
Proposed written alternatives include the Binnen-I, slash forms, the gender star, and the colon; Simon describes using a lowercase feminine plural playfully as an inclusive option.
English singular they and French iel are examples of pronoun innovations; German users have also proposed forms such as dey.
Simon presents these forms as ongoing experiments rather than settled standards, with future uptake still uncertain.

34:20 German Grammatical Gender Makes Pronoun Change Harder

German gender appears beyond third-person pronouns, including in possessives, relative pronouns, and adjective agreement.
A gender-neutral English phrase such as “our principal” still requires a gendered German possessive form such as unser or unsere.
English and Swedish have less gender-marked morphology, so introducing a pronoun such as singular they affects fewer parts of grammar.
Russian presents an even broader challenge because past-tense verbs agree with the subject’s gender.

38:00 Who Sets German Language Norms? Institutions, Experts, and Duden

Simon distinguishes flexible usage norms from legally binding rules: speakers do not go to jail for choosing one grammatical variant over another.
The Council for German Orthography has a defined remit in areas such as schools and public administration, but does not control all German usage.
Duden is a commercial publisher whose dictionary has public influence, not a government authority with the power to enforce language rules.
Simon contrasts Germany’s institutional arrangements with the stronger language-regulating role of the Académie française in France.

42:13 Linguists, Media, and Schools Shape Inclusive-Language Norms

A public claim that linguists universally accept the generic masculine prompted an open letter signed by more than 200 linguists who disagreed.
Television presenters using forms such as Student*innen brought gender-inclusive language into a prominent German media debate.
Simon compares gradual normalization through media exposure with newspapers’ eventual adoption of Germany’s 1990s spelling reform.
Schools and universities socialize young people into language practices, while guidelines and some government prohibitions also influence which forms are used.

47:40 Gendered Language as a Marker of Identity and Political Alignment

In contemporary Germany, choosing a generic masculine or an inclusive form can signal political affiliation and affect social likeability or status.
Simon argues that language is closely tied to personality and identity, helping explain why speakers may treat forms learned when young as inherently correct.
Drawing on Henning Lobin’s work on language and culture wars, he notes that disputes over words can stand in for broader political conflicts.
Simon’s proposed role for historical sociolinguists is to explain evidence and language change to the public, rather than to prescribe a single solution.

53:02 Chinese Writing Adds Gender Distinctions Absent from Speech

Spoken Mandarin tā is a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun, but written Chinese uses distinct characters for “he” 他 and “she” 她, both pronounced tā.
The written distinction developed around 1900 as Chinese translators adapted texts from Western literature; the character components visibly encode person and woman.
Writers have experimented with alternatives, including Latin-letter pinyin TA within Chinese-character text, to avoid choosing a binary written pronoun.
Simon presents this grassroots writing practice as a bottom-up response to a gender distinction that spoken Mandarin does not require.

Summary, takeaways, and chapters were generated by AI from the video's transcript and may contain errors. The video belongs to its creator, Henrike Lähnemann.