Ujumbe: 82
Lugha: English
oren (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 1 Novemba 2006 9:04:39 alasiri
Person = viro
Man = viro
Woman = virino
You might be able to argue this is equal if ino also meant person (non-gender specific). but it doesn't. The ONLY word for person also means man, and not woman. The only word for child also means son, and not daughter. The only word for parent also means father, and not mother.
You must acknowledge that these words have ambiguous identity. To then say that vir- can be used as a strictly gendered suffix is false. Equating the default with male is the the downfall of the English language:
War is the plight of man.
Early baldness is the the plight of man.
Those both work. But:
War is the plight of man.
Menopause is the plight of man.
Doesn't.
RichieAdler (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 4 Novemba 2006 2:30:47 alasiri
Shawna:Personally, I think that it would be better, in making society less sexist, to concentrate on the REAL problems, like equal pay for equal work, sexual harrassment, rape and domestic violence, etc. before we start taking apart languages.I find curious enough that most of the people in this thread complaining about how sexist is Esperanto are mostly from US, the country where political correctness was invented.
(...)
I almost guarantee that the average woman working minimum wage whose boss gropes her and she's worried if she stops him she'll lose her job, is not EVEN worried about sexist language. (...)
Let's fix society before we fix language.
Shawna
Let's just say that in Dr. Z's age, people were more worried about real understanding of other people and less about carefully tiptoe around subjects to avoid even the slightest risks of offending even the smallest opinion group. (Not that women are that, of course. But the current tendency of extreme political correctness is ludicrous and pointless.)
One of the reasons because of which I thank every day for living far away from the Empire.
oren (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 5 Novemba 2006 7:03:49 asubuhi
Mi proponas, ni sxangxu la subjekton!
pastorant (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 5 Novemba 2006 7:33:32 asubuhi
oren:Mi konsentas.
Mi proponas, ni sxangxu la subjekton!
RiotNrrd (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 5 Novemba 2006 8:00:47 asubuhi
oren:... To make things worse, we're all krokodiling!!Heh. No, this is the part of the swamp where crocodiles are welcome.
pastorant (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 5 Novemba 2006 11:45:54 alasiri
RiotNrrd:Kial ni ne povas skribi Esperante? Kial ne forumo(novaĵgrupo), kie ni povas diskuti verajn temojn? Ĉi tio estas Esperanta TTT-ejo, ĉu ne?oren:... To make things worse, we're all krokodiling!!Heh. No, this is the part of the swamp where crocodiles are welcome.
RiotNrrd (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 6 Novemba 2006 2:01:15 asubuhi
The name of this part of the forum is "In English". Which is a hint that the posts in this section aren't really meant to be in Esperanto. There IS an Esperanto section of this forum, which is probably where Esperanto posts ought to be made.
Although, as is evident from browsing around the "In English" section, there is definitely some spillover.
In any case, this is the crocodile corral, so it's perfectly alright to crocodile away with wild abandon.
erinja (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 6 Novemba 2006 2:09:47 asubuhi
oren:Not to belabor the point, but the prefix vir- is not an equilizer for the suffix -in.In 11+ years of speaking Esperanto, I have never once heard "viro" to mean "person", "filo" to mean "child", or "patro" to mean "parent". Person is "persono" or "homo", as someone already pointed out. Child is "infano". Or if you want to talk about someone's offspring, as opposed to a young person, you could always say "gefilo" if you wanted to talk about that in the singular (this is a reasonably recent usage, using ge- with singular words to indicate gender neutrality).
Person = viro
Man = viro
Woman = virino
You might be able to argue this is equal if ino also meant person (non-gender specific). but it doesn't. The ONLY word for person also means man, and not woman. The only word for child also means son, and not daughter. The only word for parent also means father, and not mother.
You must acknowledge that these words have ambiguous identity. To then say that vir- can be used as a strictly gendered suffix is false. Equating the default with male is the the downfall of the English language:
War is the plight of man.
Early baldness is the the plight of man.
Those both work. But:
War is the plight of man.
Menopause is the plight of man.
Doesn't.
As for the menopause and men quote - it sounds wrong because "men" means both male people and the human race as a whole. But you could very easily use "mankind" instead and it would sound fine, at least to my ear, in spite of the fact that "mankind" could be considered sexist in its own right.
huplescat (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 6 Juni 2007 11:58:24 alasiri
To use "-iĉ" follows exactly the same logic as "were-" and "wo-" in OE. It seems quite sensible to me. To claim that one cannot make such an addition to Esperanto at this stage seems ridiculously precious, and probably betrays an internalised prejudice (whether it is a man or a woman saying so).
RiotNrrd (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 7 Juni 2007 1:39:59 asubuhi
huplescat:As I understand it, in Old English "man" was originally gender-neutral...I seem to recall that it comes from the German "mann", which means "one" (the way "oni" does in Esperanto). Dunno if that's actually true or not, but it's what I've heard.