Gender Neutrality...
от Kalantir, 15 октября 2011 г.
Сообщений: 162
Язык: English
Kalantir (Показать профиль) 17 октября 2011 г., 21:55:59
jean-luc:This is the first time because the other languages I have attempted to learn have FAR more speakers and are pretty much guaranteed not to pay any attention to some random white guy. The chance of getting 182 million Indians to change their language is exactly 0%. Plus, it's not trying to become an international language so it's really not comparable.
When was the last time you seriously asked for a change in a language you're beginner at ?
However, I have several friends who all come from different ethnic backgrounds who have all complained to me about how terrible the English language is to learn and use. One is a native Spanish speaker, another a native Mandarin speaker, and the other a native Arabic speaker. They come from Argentina, China, and Jordan, respectively. They are the ones who brought it to my attention how flawed most languages really are. So based off of my limited experiences, I have found that people do get quite annoyed with things they find illogical in other languages they learn.
jean-luc:I never said anything about sexism.
Saying that this asymmetry imply sexism is simply wrong
jean-luc:I already stated that this has nothing to do with making the language more desirable to learn.
Sorry but if people doesn't learn learn esperanto, it's not because it's not pleasant but because they will gain nothing to do it. Except the ability to read few difficult to get books and so...
johmue:I wasn't suggesting any change. I merely asked for opinions on the already suggested change. Mainly I just wanted to know how many Esperantists were aware of the -icx suffix.
First of all: Become a fluent Esperanto speaker and get to know how the Esperanto community works, before you suggest changes.
chrisim101010 (Показать профиль) 18 октября 2011 г., 2:17:39
Seriously though, when i come across old topics that people are sick of hearing about, they often ignore them. For example, the rest of the world's opinion of Esperanto as an international language. One would therefore conclude, that if people were genuinely sick of language reform, even on a relatively small scale, then the conversation would soon die, except in small, passionate conversation. Yet this does not appear to be the case here. Is it therefore correct to conclude, that most people posting here, deep down, wish the language would change, but realistically know, that it will never occur, then get irritated by people who keep reminding them of the topic?
Or perhaps, this IS the small, passionate conversation!
razlem (Показать профиль) 18 октября 2011 г., 2:56:13
I've been thinking recently about why Esperanto attracts so many reform discussions, compared to natural languages. I hypothesize that because Esperanto belongs to the people of the world, not to a national or ethnic group, some people think they should have a say in how the language may better suit the public.
erinja (Показать профиль) 18 октября 2011 г., 3:04:01
ceigered:One problem I've already noticed - if some people are using things like "edzo" gender neutrally, how can we tell them apart from people who aren't?I have never heard of anyone using "edzo" in a gender neutral way. If I heard a man talking about his "edzo", I would simply assume he was gay. Especially in Esperanto, because gay Esperantists are very common. I would question the gender neutrality only if the person obviously spoke very poor Esperanto; in that case I might wonder if they were misremembering the word (rather than making a conscious choice of using "edzo" to refer to both men and women).
chrisim101010:Is it therefore correct to conclude, that most people posting here, deep down, wish the language would change, but realistically know, that it will never occur, then get irritated by people who keep reminding them of the topic?No, most people don't really want to change the language.
It's one of those things that you're so sick of hearing about, but people don't want the beginner walking away with the wrong impression, so they argue it passionately. I think people want to make sure that beginners understand the community's general viewpoint and direction on language changes.
It's like going into a Mac forum and asking "But doesn't Windows make much better computers?". It might be an honest question from a person who genuinely wants to know, or it might be a troll just trying to get a rise out of people.
Regardless of which one it was, I'm sure 99% of the Mac forum's readers would passionately disagree, but I'm pretty sure it would start a long thread. People want to prevent a newbie from walking away with the wrong idea. (even if it becomes obvious that it's a troll and not a sincere question, people are usually not willing to let it go)
The forum's readers might worry that if they said nothing and ignored the dumb question, the newbie would think "Oh, I guess these Mac users DO all agree that Windows computers are better!"
erinja (Показать профиль) 18 октября 2011 г., 3:09:37
razlem:I'm certain that, given the chance, everyone would change something about Esperanto (as one would change something about their own language, or government, or mankind altogether).It depends on what you call a chance to change it.
If someone said to me, "You are Zamenhof, and you are launching Esperanto. Before it is launched, make your changes to it.", I would have a couple of very minor changes to make.
But if someone said "Esperanto stands as it is today; choose a language reform, and I guarantee that the entire community of speakers will change the way they talk to follow your reforms" - in that case I would not make any changes. I agree with the natural process of evolution that the language is following, and I wouldn't change that. I think that continuity of literature is worth something. It's the same reason that I wouldn't make a change to English, though it has many obvious difficulties.
I think that many Esperanto speakers have the same outlook that I do.
If it were my GOVERNMENT -- yes, I would have a few changes I'd make. But languages are different. If you change a health plan or a system of congressional representation or whatever aspect of government, that makes a concrete change in my life. The cost to benefit is worth it. Changing a language arbitrarily, even if I might see it as an improvement - the cost to benefit doesn't work out, in my opinion.
ceigered (Показать профиль) 18 октября 2011 г., 13:07:01
See, governments have no problems making "instant" changes and implementing them.
Languages on the other hand require those changes to be transmitted somehow, and also require those changes to be agreed upon.
In governments we use voting. But of course, that's not a very powerful system for languages, let alone western democracy (given how little we actually vote for anything important, we just vote for figure heads and let them figure stuff out
)A language can only change as fast as its users agree on a change and progress about that change is transmitted back to the community for them to know whether A) the change has been implemented or B) what the consensus actually is then and what steps need to be implemented before AII) reissuing the idea or BII) scrapping it.
razlem (Показать профиль) 18 октября 2011 г., 13:41:10
Erinja's post kind of peaked my curiosity though; what changes would you make ma'am?
/devil's advocate
erinja (Показать профиль) 18 октября 2011 г., 14:08:21
razlem:Erinja's post kind of peaked my curiosity though; what changes would you make ma'am?I wouldn't mess with any of the core grammar, because of potential unforeseen consequences.
The changes I would make are places where things don't make good logical sense.
I would make "smile" a separate root from "laugh". It works fine as "rideto" but a smile is really not a small laugh, so the logic fails there.
I would make all roots firmly gender-neutral, and add prefixes or suffixes as necessary. A "fratino" is not really a female brother. It is weird to me that saying a gender-neutral family word in the singular is not easy, necessitating the form "gefrato", which is not terribly logical itself.
Ido has a gender-neutral pronoun, which is a cool idea. Esperanto has a number of easy workarounds for that, but if I were doing the language from scratch, I'd probably include that. (though I would not go as far as the riistoj by removing ALL gendered pronouns).
Anyway, I'm not willing to make any of those changes now, no more than I'd be willing to reform English's system of irregular verbs. Those changes aren't what Esperanto is, so I'm happy to speak the language as it currently stands.
darkweasel (Показать профиль) 18 октября 2011 г., 14:24:18
erinja:I would make "smile" a separate root from "laugh". It works fine as "rideto" but a smile is really not a small laugh, so the logic fails there.do you like "ghojlipumo"?
ceigered (Показать профиль) 18 октября 2011 г., 14:35:28
(for some reason I want to engage in vowel harmony and say "ĝöjlipümäs" though
)