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Describing both genders

by Alkanadi, August 5, 2014

Messages: 13

Language: English

Alkanadi (User's profile) August 5, 2014, 3:04:29 PM

What is more common/better way to translate this:

1, Parents - Patroj or Gepatroj
2, Great grand Parents - Prapatroj or Geprapatroj
3, Kids of both genders - Infanoj or Geinfanoj

michaleo (User's profile) August 5, 2014, 3:31:12 PM

Alkanadi:What is more common/better way to translate this:

1, Parents - Patroj or Gepatroj
2, Great grand Parents - Prapatroj or Geprapatroj
3, Kids of both genders - Infanoj or Geinfanoj
Patroj means fathers. Gepatroj means parents
Prapatroj means grandfathers; geprapatroj means grandparents.
Infanoj means children; geinfanoj means chidren of both genders.

erinja (User's profile) August 5, 2014, 4:29:38 PM

Huh?

Avoj means grandfathers, geavoj means grandparents. Great grandparents would be prageavoj.

Infanoj is gender neutral. Geinfanoj isn't necessary.

sergejm (User's profile) August 5, 2014, 5:10:08 PM

erinja:
Infanoj is gender neutral. Geinfanoj isn't necessary.
It isn't true.
Infanoj is group of childs of unknown genders. There may be only boys or girls.
Geinfanoj is group of childs of both genders. There are at least one boy and one girl.

erinja (User's profile) August 5, 2014, 5:28:58 PM

Like I said, infanoj is gender neutral. Could be boys, girls, or mixed. If you know for a fact that there is at least one boy and at least one girl in a group, "infanoj" is still perfectly good. People get into this strange specificity with ge-, but they are unlikely to apply it uniformly in their lives. If I have mice of both genders at home, and I know this for a fact because I hear the squeaking of mouse babies, I would still simply say that I have "musoj", in my house, not "gemusoj". Or people wouldn't say, oh look at the gebirdoj sitting on their nest outside my house. Better to save "ge" for when it actually matters rather than choosing arbitrary instances to apply it.

AllenHartwell (User's profile) August 5, 2014, 10:51:45 PM

Infano is either a male child or unknown. You need -in- to make it mean girl. Infano by itself is default masculine, just as any other word referring to living creatures.

erinja (User's profile) August 6, 2014, 12:09:14 AM

That's your interpretation, Allen, but I don't agree.

Esperanto doesn't have words that are "neutral or masculine". There are words that are masculine, or feminine, or neutral, but not "neutral or masculine" or "neutral or feminine". That complicates things more than necessary. If "infano" was default-masculine in any way, then "geinfanoj" would be quite a common word, whereas actually it isn't.

sergejm (User's profile) August 6, 2014, 5:38:32 AM

"Infano" is sex neutral. The masculine word is "filo" or "knabo", the feminine is "filino" or "knabino".
"Infanino" would be more strange, than "geinfanoj". Use "filino" or "knabino" instead.
Esperanto doesn't have words that are "neutral or masculine", but there is a word "masculine or neutral". It is "li".
"Ge-" is commonly used to indicate pair: "gesinjoroj X" means "mr X and mrs X", in other cases use "sinjoroj kaj sinjorinoj".

Rejsi (User's profile) August 6, 2014, 6:04:51 AM

sergejm:Esperanto doesn't have words that are "neutral or masculine", but there is a word "masculine or neutral". It is "li".
Eh. This point is debatable. While some use "li" as a gender neutral pronoun, others use "gxi" (which I think is the better option).

Timtim (User's profile) August 6, 2014, 7:52:32 AM

sergejm:Esperanto doesn't have words that are "neutral or masculine", but there is a word "masculine or neutral". It is "li".
You might want to build a time machine and lecture Zamenhof on that front, then. He was very clear that the neuter pronoun is ĝi, used not only for infano but also for persono, when we don't know the sex of the person in question. "... parolante pri infanoj, bestoj kaj objektoj, kies naturan sekson ni ne scias, ni vole-ne-vole (sen ia ofenda intenco) uzas pronomon mezan inter «li» kaj «ŝi» – la vorton «ĝi». Tiel same ni parolas ankaŭ pri «persono». Cetere, parolante pri infano, pri kiu ni scias, ke ĝi ne estas knabino (aŭ almenaŭ ne scias, ke ĝi estas knabino), ni povas uzi la vorton «li»."

Yes, he says at the end that if we've no reason to think that the child is a girl we might use li but that doesn't mean the pronoun is therefore described as being masculine or neuter. It's still a masculine pronoun. I take a similar approach in English when a playful dog comes up to me and will often say "good boy" whilst playing with it. (The clue's in that sentence - I naturally wrote "with it" rather than "with him".) That doesn't mean that "boy" becomes masculine or neuter. It's masculine and I used it in preference to "good dog", because when we talk to our pets (whose sex we naturally know) we tend to call them "boy" or "girl" rather than "dog" or "cat". I prefer to risk getting the sex wrong and speak to it familiarly than use the safer sex-neutral but impersonal word "dog".

The same is true in Esperanto. In the absence of knowledge of a baby's sex we might use "li" (or "ŝi" ) because many find "ĝi" to be distasteful. (In English I've heard women get upset at people using "it" as a pronoun for their babies, including the magical response "Don't call it 'it'!" - "Ne nomu ĝin 'ĝi'!" ) That's a case of a pronoun indicating a living being in use to avoid one that is primarily used for things and not people. No, the sexes might not match up but the user prefers "I'll say 'li' and be wrong half the time" to "I'll say 'ĝi'".

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