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Gender Neutrality...

de Kalantir, 2011-oktobro-15

Mesaĝoj: 162

Lingvo: English

barat (Montri la profilon) 2011-oktobro-16 19:42:19

razlem:I think the uproar about gender neutrality (and other features of Esperanto) is that, unlike natural languages, the decision to include them was decided ultimately by one man and his biases.
Who knows, if the Polish bias for the masculine/femine verb usage was not due to some psychopath a thousand years ago? Someone had to invent it as the first user. We use this language. Are we psychopaths then? No. If I use -in- suffix in Esperanto, do I want to humiliate women? NO!!! It only makes things easier. Without it I would have to learn quite a lot words more and it would increase my linguistic handicap, because it is more difficult compared to the present system.

RiotNrrd (Montri la profilon) 2011-oktobro-16 20:20:50

razlem:I think the uproar about gender neutrality (and other features of Esperanto) is that, unlike natural languages, the decision to include them was decided ultimately by one man and his biases.
Whereas I think the uproar is because beginners don't quite grasp that the language isn't a project still under development, but rather an already fully developed language with more than a century of use behind it, and all of the social inertia that implies.

While it might be fun to complain about the idiosyncrasies of English, French, German, Russian, etc., no one seriously expects core reforms of national languages*. That anyone expects such reforms of Esperanto to be taken seriously indicates that they consider it a different class of language than the national ones. But thinking that is a mistake.

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* I mean, c'mon Poles. Buy some vowels. They're really not that expensive. rido.gif

1Guy1 (Montri la profilon) 2011-oktobro-16 21:01:10

I think the real danger of trying to 'fix' Esperanto would be the risk of 'breaking' it - the only constructed language to gain anything remotely resembling any kind of success.

It is not perfect but it seems to work. Leave it alone.

razlem (Montri la profilon) 2011-oktobro-16 21:01:37

RiotNrrd:While it might be fun to complain about the idiosyncrasies of English, French, German, Russian, etc., no one seriously expects core reforms of national languages*.
And yet it happens. Here are some examples on Wikipedia.

RiotNrrd:That anyone expects such reforms of Esperanto to be taken seriously indicates that they consider it a different class of language than the national ones. But thinking that is a mistake.
It is a different class. Not lower or higher, but not comparable to natural languages.

Esperanto does not have the ability to be reformed, which in my opinion is both a blessing and a curse. It's great that you won't ever have to worry about changing the way you say something, but if new developments arise that demonstrate inefficiencies/biases in the language, you won't be able to change it.

barat (Montri la profilon) 2011-oktobro-16 21:08:27

razlem:Esperanto does not have the ability to be reformed, which in my opinion is both a blessing and a curse. It's great that you won't ever have to worry about changing the way you say something, but if new developments arise that demonstrate inefficiencies/biases in the language, you won't be able to change it.
Don Harlow:

REAL LANGUAGES EVOLVE, AND ESPERANTO HASN'T ...HAS IT?
If you don't count going from a vocabulary of 800 roots (1887) to one of 9000 official roots and at least 9000 unofficial ones (size of Zhang Honfan's Esperanto-Chinese Dictionary) as evolution, then maybe it hasn't. If you don't count the gradual spread of the use of the -N ending (Zamenhof would have said "pas^o post pas^o" for "step by step"; most people today would say "pas^on post pas^o"), then maybe it hasn't.
If you don't count the gradual disappearance of -CIO object roots in favor of truncated action roots ('abolicio' - 'aboli', 'navigacio' - 'navigi', 'administracio' - 'administri', 'federacio' - 'federi'), then maybe it hasn't. If you don't count the gradual conversion of country names in -UJO to country names in -IO, then maybe it hasn't. If you don't count the growing treatment of 'anstatau~' and 'krom' as coordinating conjunctions rather than prepositions (with consequent further use of -N for desambiguation), then maybe it hasn't.
If you don't count the increase in the number of the body of official affixes by about eight percent, then maybe it hasn't. If you don't count the appearance of a number of unofficial affixes, then maybe it hasn't. If you don't count the appearance of short prepositional phrases concatenated into adverbs, then maybe it hasn't. If you don't count the development of dozens of different writing styles, then maybe it hasn't. Etc.

razlem (Montri la profilon) 2011-oktobro-16 21:12:10

Reform is different than evolution.

barat (Montri la profilon) 2011-oktobro-16 21:19:23

razlem:Reform is different than evolution.
Give the evidence for that claim.

razlem (Montri la profilon) 2011-oktobro-16 21:46:33

Evolution is change over a long period of time. A reform happens relatively quickly and implies a conscious decision by a person or group of people.

targanook (Montri la profilon) 2011-oktobro-16 21:54:04

razlem:Evolution is change over a long period of time. A reform happens relatively quickly.
A change here, a change there. I don't see any real difference (same as Barat does not). Esperanto doesn't need any reforms and it is still young. It does need more advanced users. I work hard to become such a user myself. And it is impossible to please everyone.

robbkvasnak (Montri la profilon) 2011-oktobro-17 02:27:30

Virinoj kaj viriĉoj! Kalantir is really bright and I give him credit for that. He belongs to a generation that was upset that the gay movement seemed to feel that gay always meant a male. So Glbt was changed to Lgbt (much to the confusion of many) and then they added a couple of other letters to the equation.
Langauges change because of "economy". Picture this, at the university where I teach they recently built a Student Union building on the opposite side of a lawn from the building in which I teach. In order to get to the SU building, where they offer free tea and coffee, you had to make a big arch AROUND the lawn. One day, some student who was probably tired from one of my lectures (haha) cut across the lawn. Another student saw him/her and did the same. The footprints of those two students hardly changed anything. BUT (!) the hundreds of students who followed them mashed the grass down, so the university put up a yellow ribbon around the "path". Soon the students circumvented the ribbon. Finally, the university PAVED the path and made it official. A change was born. That is how language changes.
Kalantir is right - E should be gender neutral - BUT until the general speakers feel that way, it will not change. One of the people on here invented a new language. It is absolutely volapükish - a nightmare to learn in its attempt to use words from about 50 different languages in altered forms.
I say, let the speakers decide. Esperanto is no longer a planned language. It is a living language. The speakers of a language decide as a group what form is "correct" and what form isn't. If the iĉuloj kaj inuloj aŭ uliĉoj kaj ulinoj who speak E want to change it, they will.
That the French say "ordinateur" but "weekend" despite the Academie de la language francaise" proves my point. That is also my stance on "neologismoj" (a neologism in itself). If people like liva instead of maldekstra (and it might be easier to understand in the longrun and not confuse from a distance) then so be it. I will try using -iĉ- just to see. Okay you geviroj! Viriĉoj kaj virinoj! MOJOSE!!!!
One more point - LANGUAGES ARE NEITHER NEUTRAL NOR NON-NEUTRAL! They are languages. As an earlier writer pointed out, it depends on the speakers and users of the language. German, in an attempt to be gender neutral added -In so that you have the form StudentInnen. In print it is strange to say the least but I have NEVER heard anyone use it in spoken speech.

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