Gender stereotypes have also been removed from the new Danish dictionary.
Dansk Sprognævn, or the Danish Language Council, which prepares the new version of the Danish spelling dictionary, has made the vocabulary more gender-neutral than before. The purpose is also to eliminate gender-related stereotypes.
The experts go through, for example, words describing professions, many of which still currently have the male ending -mand or the female ending -kvinde.
However, mand does not always refer to a man, the council is reminded. Mand can also refer to a person or something completely different. For example, “nullermand” means a poodle familiar to everyone who has cleaned their home. For this reason, not all Mand words are being reformed.
Words that are no longer commonly used are also not edited.
Among the stereotypes to be removed are violent men
Senior researcher Margrethe Heidemann Andersen says For the Danish broadcaster DRthat the experts have first listed all the words with the ending -man or -woman.
After listing, the trio of experts from the Language Council have gone through each word one by one, considering whether an equivalent should be created for the word by also introducing a suffix referring to the other gender. One option is also to change the ending to -person.
For example, the word “afholdsmand” meaning sober person will also be used in the future as “afholdskvinde”. “Altmuligmand”, which can be translated as mixed worker or all-purpose planer, may also be “altmuligkvinde” in the future.
At the same time, the experts have gone through the examples of the use of words given in the spelling dictionary, so that they do not cultivate a stereotypical image of the genders. For this reason, the new Retskrivningsordbogen has removed, among other things, references to men as perpetrators of violence in the explanations of violence words.
In the interview with DR, Heidemann Andersen does not say how many words have been changed to the new format. The Language Council emphasizes that it is not possible to achieve a completely even distribution between the endings -mand and -kvinde.