There are few more important things to
people than what they are called. One person's diminutive is
another person's mortal insult. And there are many rules here, culturally specific rules.
Eddie Murphy can use the "N-word" but under no
circumstances may I use the "N-word", for example.
So fair warning for those of you who
are not up on your contemporary German: "fraulein" is a
word that is strongly discouraged these days, through a German social
process that is the equivalent of our "Mrs/Miss/Ms"
dialectic.
When I first heard this, I was not all that impressed. But I just did a test and it occurs to me that there may be some subtle issues here (sarcasm, sorry). Just do the following experiment. Go to Google, type in "fraulein" and then go to images, then stand back. Holy moly! See for example:
Click here for the Google image search.
Is there something sexist about this image?
From a latex couture magazine, yikes, fraulein, please, put some clothes on!
What could be sexist about this?
Click here for the Google image search.
So, to be clear, to the best of my
knowledge one may still use "fraulein" in a way that is not
insulting when addressing a very young girl, either sternly or
genially (e.g. humorously, perhaps, just guessing, one might say
"perhaps the fraulein would be so good as to clean up her room"
when addressing a six year old gal, perhaps, and that might still be
OK). But otherwise, one uses the term "frau" so far as I
can tell.
Now I have a few friends who are far
more knowledgeable about both feminism and modern German, so they will
enlighten us all, I hope, but in the meantime, a word to the wise is
hopefully sufficient.
Now does this mean that we should go
back and change all our World War II movies and television shows?
That is a question with no single answer, I think. If one were going
for authenticity in the movie/show, then the answer would be no, it
would still be correct to use "fraulein" in that time
period. But if one were doing a new show, today, about the period,
then one might think about using the modern usage if one did not
intend to provoke a reaction. It could go either way, depending on
what you wanted to achieve.
Now to get to our final topic: the potential effect this language change will have on the practice and art of special visual effects. To the best of our knowledge, this change will have absolutely no effect on special effects, now or in the future. Just wanted to reassure those of you who may have been concerned.
Now to get to our final topic: the potential effect this language change will have on the practice and art of special visual effects. To the best of our knowledge, this change will have absolutely no effect on special effects, now or in the future. Just wanted to reassure those of you who may have been concerned.
For a wild screaming match on the
topic, see the Wikipedia discussion:
For a more balanced discussion and
presentation of the issue(s), see:
Most interesting, Mein Herr.
ReplyDeleteFrau Wiedersehen!
ReplyDeleteJohn
DeleteI think you are making a pun on "auf wiedersehen", is that correct... sorry I am a little slow sometimes with my foreign language puns!
MW