Talk:Ampelmännchen

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After reading this article, may I just say...I fuckin' love Wikipedia. You guys are great. jengod 22:05, July 28, 2005 (UTC)

Well, it was a fun process for me. I've only been on Wikipedia for a few weeks and I've been having a good time. And having something mentioned on the front page certainly feels nice. During its creation, we even noticed that the website Expatica had ripped off one of the original images (previously used in the traffic lights article) without attribution. There are a bunch of other neat things related to Ostalgie on the German Wikipedia and this was one of the first I translated. Tfine80 22:22, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

They now seem to have attributed the images... 68.39.174.238 06:10, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Man or men on the traffic signal?

The word can be either singular or plural. On the German Wikipedia they define it in the singular in the definition. Tfine80 23:00, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

"Männchen" is ambiguous, but in this case probably just means "little guy" (although it may still be plural). "Weibchen" is a pun on the usage of the word "Männchen" do denote an animal's sex in casual German ("Männchen"/"Weibchen" could be translated as (n.) "male"/"female" in this case).

I think that it's the singular form in this case because the whole Ostalgie thing is about the character of the East German version, which would be anthropomorphised as one distinct "person" (with his less cute West German "brother"). From the word alone, the exact number can't be recognised, though. — Ashmodai ^{(talk · contribs)} 17:40, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ampelmädchen or Ampelfrau

Which is the correct term for the "female" Ampelmännchen? On this article they're called Ampelmädchen, but if you look at the article on Zwickau (down in the History section), they're called Ampelfrau. Being a non-German speaker, I have no idea which is correct. So, anyone out there know? --Brownings (talk) 17:50, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

There is no established standard here - it is a very young invention and still very local to be found for real. Common language would use the established "Ampelmännchen" and transpose it along common pairings: männchen/weibchen (male/female individual), mann/frau (man/woman), junge/mädchen (boy/girl). The treat here is that the oldfashioned "Weib" can be a derogatory expression - modern language would prefer "Frau" in all cases even that "Weibchen" (little Weib) is a common term in biology without the connotation. So in technical documents it would be named "Ampelfrau" while colloquial language would pick "Ampelweibchen". Since "Frau" does not transpose the "little" connotation some came up with "Mädchen" but that is neither used technically nor colloquially, perphaps it's an invention in the political arena. What's going to be standard language is unsure - since Ampelmännchen was originally a colloquial expression I might expect that it is Ampelweibchen but YMMV. As for the English wikipedia I'd choose Ampelfrau along with de:Ampelfrau Guidod (talk) 12:46, 23 December 2007 (UTC)