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Gender-sensitive address for automatically generated e-mail in gender languages

1 Requirements

Generated e-mail already has a placeholder [MAIL_SALUTATION], which includes something like Mr. or Mrs., depending on the sex of the addressee. (In German the possible values are Herr and Frau.) However, in contrast to English, where you can easily compose a message beginning with

    Dear [MAIL_SALUTATION] [LAST_NAME],

and get something like

    Dear Mrs. Smith,

this does not work in a gender language like German, French, Russian, etc. because the word corresponding to Dear also comes in different genders.

The solution would be to add two more placeholders:

• [MAIL_SALUTATION_FORMAL]: would contain ♂ Sehr geehrter and ♀ Sehr geehrte in German, ♂ Szanowny and ♀ Szanowna in Polish, ♂ Egregio and ♀ Egregia in Italian, ♂ Уважаемый and ♀ Уважаемая in Russian, etc.
• [MAIL_SALUTATION_INFORMAL]: would contain ♂ Lieber and ♀ Liebe in German, ♂ Drogi and ♀ Droga in Polish, ♂ Caro and ♀ Cara in Italian, ♂ Дорогой and ♀ Дорогая in Russian, etc.

As one can see, while for German or Italian it would theoretically be enough to have just one new placeholder containing the right gender ending, so that one could write something like Liebe[ENDING] oder Sehr geehrte[ENDING], this does not work for other languages. And in the English language version, these two variables would of course be filled with the values Dear, Dear, Dear and Dear and probably never actually employed by the users.

Note that this is a very necessary feature because automatically generated e-mail does not really work without it in gender languages because possible alternatives to address students personally with a gender-neutral formula, e.g. German Hallo [MAIL_SALUTATION] [LAST_NAME], are largely considered inappropriate.

2 Additional Information

• Idea / concept: Daniel Bunčić (University of Cologne)
• Interest in funding: no
• Maintainer: (will be set by Jour Fixe / maintainer)
• Implementation of the feature is done by (will be set by Jour Fixe / maintainer)
• Testcases by: ?

3 Discussion

Zenzen, Enrico [ezenzen], 18 AUG 2022: This request no longer fulfills the requirements of the Feature Wiki. In consultation with the maintainer I change the status of the feature request to "Redundant / outdated". If the request is still relevant, please update template and mockups.

4 Implementation

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Test Cases

Test cases completed at {date} by {user}

• {Test case number linked to Testrail} : {test case title}

Approval

Approved at {date} by {user}.