No need to be sorry. I didn’t realise, in Dutch I don’t think that connotation stuck for the equivalent, meid. That simply means girl.

I tend to agree, but I do get where the other viewpoint comes from. I’m from a country where I don’t believe this is a major point of contention, as long as we’re respectful with each other I don’t think people feel the need to make a big deal out of this, but I’m aware I’m speaking from a bubble here, others may disagree.

I do work in an international company with many anglophones from the UK and USA, and it’s a much bigger point there, to the point certain expressions are banned, e.g. addressing a group as guys. I speculate that it’s a bit of a cultural thing, and a language thing. As others mention, a lot of languages are Ill suited to naturally use gender neutrality. English is quite malleable that way.

Oh sorry I went out and commented the same thing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Actually, Mädchen (meaning “girl” in German) is a diminutive. It comes from Magd (an old word for “maid” or “young woman”) with the -chen suffix, which is a common diminutive in German.

The -chen suffix makes words grammatically neuter, which is why Mädchen takes das instead of die, even though it refers to a female person.

I’m not German but the same applies to the Dutch word for girl, and we’ve the same rule for neutral. By the way, ‘magd’ in Dutch means virgin (maagd to be precise), which sounds incredibly inappropriate to be going around calling someone; little virgin (/¯ ಠ_ಠ)/¯