[net.nlang] Women vs Girls

riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) (12/14/83)

Although I shouldn't try to pass myself off as a real expert (I'm far
from a native speaker), I just got back this fall from nearly a year
of speaking German on a daily basis, and here's my reaction to Steve
Maurer's "Frau/Fraeulein/Maedchen" paradigm:  I'm sure that's what it
says in the textbook, but most people don't talk that way.

  "Frau" means (1) woman, (2) wife, and (3) Mrs.

  "Fraeulein" means (1) Miss and (2) waitress.  (Both of these forms may
	be dying out.)

  "Maedchen" means (1) little girl and (2) young woman, etc., much like our
	confused English "girl".

College students speak casually of "ein Maedchen in meinem Seminar" just
as American college students refer to "a girl in my class".  I can't
imagine anybody saying "ein Fraeulein in meinem Seminar"!

As for how the big "woman/girl" controversy translates into German, I suspect
that we'd need a real expert to judge on that.  I'm not sure, but the phrase
"die Maedchen [plural] in meinem Buero" sounds less likely to my ear than
the offending English usage "the girls in my office" (that is, using "girl"
to refer to grown women).  I suspect that there may be some vestigial use of
"Fraeulein" in this way, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone who tried it
didn't get his lights punched out for it!

(By the way, the German vocabulary is complicated by many equivalents of
"gal" and the like which vary a great deal in regional dialects, I'm sure.)
----
Prentiss Riddle
{ihnp4,seismo,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddle