Skip to the content
Reply

Polyamory

by teoa, July 24, 2012

Messages: 19

Language: English

teoa (User's profile) July 24, 2012, 8:21:37 AM

Hey. Newish learner.

I live a rather... alternative lifestyle, and was glad to find Soja Kisa's wordlist with GLBT terminology. But I have a question still. I have scene a thread on here about polygamy and bigamy and someone posted about polyamory but noeone expanded on that.

I'm wondering if there was any well known, used word for polyamory.

I found the word pluramemo which I translate as a tendency towards many loves. This works but my understanding of it doesnt quite work in that it makes love, an abstract concept, pluralisable grammatically. Does that work in esperanto. What are some other suggestions for a word for polyamory?

Dankon.

sudanglo (User's profile) July 24, 2012, 9:41:31 AM

Words like polygamy and bigamy have been imported whole into Esperanto - poligamio, bigamio. If you don't like pluramemo or pluramo, feel free to use poliamorio. Don't leave off the 'io', since poli-amoro would be something slightly different.

erinja (User's profile) July 24, 2012, 11:45:42 PM

If it were me, I'd use the aforementioned pluramemo. It doesn't matter if it can be made plural; "poliamoro" can also be made plural, and for that matter, "love" can be made plural in English as well ("a lady and her loves"), so if I were you, I wouldn't worry too much about the deep grammatical analysis of how this particular word works in English versus Esperanto.

I prefer pluramemo but I think poliamorio would also be understood, by Europeans at least.

I recommend writing an e-mail to Sonja Kisa. She considers her dictionary to be a living and evolving document, and I'm sure she also had an opinion on a good word for this (and she'll probably add it to her dictionary, so others can learn from this discussion as well).

jrhowa (User's profile) July 25, 2012, 5:28:48 PM

I am in a polyamorous relationship and I have been using the word pluramemo. Wikipedia uses this term as well.

Chainy (User's profile) July 25, 2012, 5:53:01 PM

I've added these to the Lernu dictionary:
polyamory = pluramemo

polyamorous = pluramema

polyamorist = pluramemulo
I've also added the translations in the opposite direction (EO-Eng).

Chainy (User's profile) July 25, 2012, 5:56:18 PM

jrhowa:I am in a polyamorous relationship
Why do you use the singular form 'relationship'?

ceweber (User's profile) July 25, 2012, 7:33:04 PM

Where can I find this list by Sonja Kisa?
erinja:If it were me, I'd use the aforementioned pluramemo. It doesn't matter if it can be made plural; "poliamoro" can also be made plural, and for that matter, "love" can be made plural in English as well ("a lady and her loves"), so if I were you, I wouldn't worry too much about the deep grammatical analysis of how this particular word works in English versus Esperanto.

I prefer pluramemo but I think poliamorio would also be understood, by Europeans at least.

I recommend writing an e-mail to Sonja Kisa. She considers her dictionary to be a living and evolving document, and I'm sure she also had an opinion on a good word for this (and she'll probably add it to her dictionary, so others can learn from this discussion as well).

Chainy (User's profile) July 25, 2012, 8:12:42 PM

ceweber:Where can I find this list by Sonja Kisa?
Google search for "Sonja Kisa dictionary", which takes you to Sonja's English-Esperanto Dictionary

teoa (User's profile) July 25, 2012, 10:11:57 PM

Chainy:
jrhowa:I am in a polyamorous relationship
Why do you use the singular form 'relationship'?
I can't speak for him, but I would assume he used the singular because he has one relationship group that contains multiple people, not multiple relationships.
I would feel that relationships would be used in a more open style where its a not a group but seperate partners for everyone.
Im also in a poly relationship, in that our group is closed and consists of three people each person has two partners within the relationship and no other relationships, if that makes sense.

Thanks you all. I find that I like pluramemo most, it feels more based in esperanto as opposed to deriving from outside languages. I just wondered whether it was understood.

Dankon

erinja (User's profile) July 25, 2012, 11:13:31 PM

Chainy, just curious, what made you put pluramoremo into the list?

I don't know anything about polyamory myself but I am assuming that it's about more than just sex with lots of people. I see "pluramoremo" and quite frankly, I think about swingers rather than about real relationships.

Back to the top