By Gunnar Schupelius
The German Orthographic Council has accepted asterisks, underscores and colons as special characters. This is the first step towards recognizing gender spelling, says Gunnar Schupelius.
The “German Spelling Council” should make a fundamental decision: Will gender spelling be recognized? Should the characters inside the word, i.e. asterisk, underscore and colon, be included in the orthography or not?
The decision was eagerly awaited. Offices, schools, universities and ministries had asked for clarification.
But the council struggled. After a heated debate, a compromise was found on Friday: asterisks, underscores and colons are not included in the official regulations. However, they are recognized as “phenomena” in the “Special Characters” area. They are on a par with the paragraph sign (§) and the percent sign (%). Asterisk, underscore and colon have taken the first step towards official recognition.
Council President Josef Lange said that one cannot “close one’s eyes” to the fact that “in certain groups” the gender spelling is already being used. The Council must monitor this development. It is important that the written German language “remains legible, readable and legally unambiguous”. In concrete terms, this means that if asterisks, underscores and colons are used in such a way that the written language remains understandable, the special characters may be fully recognized. In two or three years the guardians of spelling want to make a new decision.
The Council for German Spelling has 41 members, eighteen from Germany, nine each from Austria and Switzerland, and the rest come from German-speaking regions of other European countries. The council was founded in 2004 and is based in Mannheim. The members are delegated by the governments and submit their recommendations to them. In Germany, the Conference of Ministers of Education of the Federal States (KMK) makes the final decision on spelling.
With its approach to asterisks, underscores and colons, the Council has strayed far from the opinion of the population, which rejects gender with at least 80 percent in all surveys. Many politicians have now responded with a clear rejection of gender language, including the Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg Kretschmann (Greens) and Berlin’s Governing Mayor Wegner (CDU), who banned gendering for his Senate Chancellery in May.
Nevertheless, this jargon of a small left-wing intellectual elite continues to prevail, the asterisk is also spoken by teachers, professors, journalists, actors, politicians, priests and artists. The Council for German spelling is strongly influenced by this. That showed on Friday.
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