names of professions in German: gender-neutral or not?

[Ji Tusk]

I havve always been curious as to which letters you prnounce? Like with ich bin. Would you prnounce the 'n' and would the 'ch' sound more like a 'k' or more like 'itch'?

As far as I know, German has no official silent letters (perhaps in spoken German, a fluent speaker might drop some vowels or sounds). The pronunciation of "ch" depends upon regional accents. I'm only vaguely familiar with German accents, but more towards the west (near our country), "ch" in "ich" is more like the scottish "gh" ("k" and "tch" I can't relate to being anything like the "ch" sound, so I don't know how better to explain it). The more eastern accent (perhaps only that around Berlin?) pronounces the "ch" in "ich" more like "sh."

I've never heard the 'n' dropped off of "bin" though.

Dutch is in some ways rather close to German, and we tend to have a lot of nouns which are different for men and women. I find it embarrassing and awkward myself, and tend to want to use the masculine term all the time. "Leraar" (teacher) instead of "Lerares" ([female] teacher), "vriend/en" (friend/s) instead of "vriendin/nen," ([female] friend/s) etc. Grammatically though, our language only has gendered and neutral; "de" and "het."

What I've gathered though, is that German tends to have more nouns/professions separated by gender than we do. I could be wrong though, I'm no expert in German.

[Starfish]

Hi all,

well, funny, one of the first things that I read after singing up here is a discussion of German! I am a native speaker, so maybe I can shed some light on this.
Yes, there are different endings in nouns for the 2 genders (although German actually has three, one is neuter). Having said that, the male version has for a long time been the universal one (connoting not male but human or person), so unless you are a very observant and sensitive feminist, it is not wrong to refer to yourself as a "Student" when you are female. I bet you 90% of German people wouldn't even notice. Of course this has been a pain in the arse for feminists for ages, so if you want to be politically correct, there are several ways to to that. If you speak of a group of people with different genders, say students, you can either say "Studenten und Studentinnen" (long) or just say "Studierende" (a neuter form which refers to the activity of studying onstead of to the actual persons). Another, and I think great option, is to say "Student_Innen", this includes both genders and the _ indicates the space for all those you cannot be captured by the two genders (say intersexed people, transgenders, take your pick). The use of the _ emerged out of German queer subculture, it is not very common yet, but I always use it in my writings.

Hope I have not confused you too much.
Starfish