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Is Esperanto eurocentric and sexist?

de Pollukso_Stelfilo, 2018-novembro-16

Mesaĝoj: 82

Lingvo: English

bartlett22183 (Montri la profilon) 2018-decembro-28 19:31:09

Yes, in 131 years there is probably nothing any newcomer has to say that Esperantists have not already read/heard before. Some newcomer comes along and think s/he has something important to say, not knowing that it is old and stale news. Learn and use the language thoroughly on a frequent basis and then come back with your criticisms. Chances are it has already been said before, and E-ists may be getting weary of having to respond to the same old and tired criticisms of newcomers who have not yet mastered and used the language.

Nephihaha (Montri la profilon) 2019-januaro-19 16:53:13

I'm sure someone has already introduced non-binary terms to Esperanto. The vocabulary is Eurocentric, but European vocabulary can be found on every continent, so is the most widespread. I suspect Semitic vocabulary (Arabic, Hebrew, Swahili) is probably the next "reservoir" of words available.

"who have not yet mastered and used the language."

Esperanto isn't quite as easy as it is sometimes claimed. But I think I really need some non-online avenues to pick up the language.

Nephihaha (Montri la profilon) 2019-januaro-19 16:56:16

Pollukso_Stelfilo:
The vocabulary is clearly eurocentric. It is based upon the six most wide-spread languages in Europe: French, Italian, Spanish, German, English and Russian. All of them have their homes in Europe and are of Indo-European descendance.
2/3 of these are widely spoken outside Europe. Russian is a Eurasian language, and was always on the fringes of Europe. Russian contains a lot of Turkic and Mongolian influences. Spanish is the main language of the Americas. French is spoken on at least four continents.

German and Italian are the only ones of these which is primarily European (although they are spoken elsewhere as minority languages).

bartlett22183 (Montri la profilon) 2019-januaro-19 19:45:35

"But I think I really need some non-online avenues to pick up the language." Many localities have Esperanto "clubs" or groups which promote and use the language. Activity varies from group to group. You can use online resources to find the nearest group and then make contact for face to face use.

FantasiesOfTomorrow (Montri la profilon) 2019-januaro-28 06:01:43

To answer the original question, yes, Esperanto is eurocentric and sexist. But, let's face it, Esperanto will never be globally adopted. A much more likely scenario is that English or Arabic or Chinese will become the universal language—if we ever adopt one. And English is almost as sexist as Esperanto—many nouns, like, say, actor, have a similar suffix to make them female, -ess and are male by default.

Metsis (Montri la profilon) 2019-januaro-28 09:35:55

FantasiesOfTomorrow:And English is almost as sexist as Esperanto—many nouns, like, say, actor, have a similar suffix to make them female, -ess and are male by default.
I would say, that English is even more, but isn't there a tendency to leave those female suffices out? That is, "She is an actor" is more common than "She is an actress".

Anyway I think the bottom line is, that since E-o is a constructed language everyone hopes, that it would have avoided eurocentrism and sexism and... Under this and other debates here in Lernu has been shown, that
  • yes, Z knew only about Hindoeuropean languages spoken in Europe. Hindoeuropean languages elsewhere and non-Hindoeuropean were out of his zone of comfort.
  • yes, Z was a white male, who lived in societies ruled by white males. He couldn't imagine, how the societies more than one hundred years later would be organised.
  • yes, Z belonged to intelligentsia and thus were able to pronounce sounds, that are not even present in dialects of Polish (I'm looking to you, ĉ, ĝ, ĵ). This and over-anxiousness to avoid homonyms made him create a pronunciation system, that is overly complicated, when it comes to consonants.
What can we do? The first item can be mildred by adopting non-Hindoeuropean words in the future for new things. The second is the easiest: stop using -in, when there is no absolute need (and trust me, such occasions are far fewer than you can first think of) and adopt ĝi or ri for the singular third person pronoun. The third is the hardest one as it touches the very fundament (pun intended) of the language. But I bet, that there will be some kind of reduction in sounds in the next hundred years (albeit probably I'm not going to see it), because languages tend to evolve to become simpler by the time.

bartlett22183 (Montri la profilon) 2019-januaro-28 19:57:59

As far as less sexism goes, try Ido. It has a much more robust pronoun system than Esperanto, including optional non-sexed third person pronouns, and words referring to sexually dimorphic beings, including humans, are sex-neutral by default. You use an affix to designate sex if you really think it is necessary to do so. Ido may have other issues that some people regard as inferior to E-o, but I would say that it has much less of a sexism issue.

kaŝperanto (Montri la profilon) 2019-januaro-28 23:00:21

bartlett22183:As far as less sexism goes, try Ido. It has a much more robust pronoun system than Esperanto, including optional non-sexed third person pronouns, and words referring to sexually dimorphic beings, including humans, are sex-neutral by default. You use an affix to designate sex if you really think it is necessary to do so. Ido may have other issues that some people regard as inferior to E-o, but I would say that it has much less of a sexism issue.
Has this always been the case (since Ido's birth)? Or is that a more recent development? I would think they were very forward thinking if a non-gendered pronoun was there since Ido's inception. It is also much easier to add major changes like this to a language when it has many fewer speakers and a much smaller body of literature. I would bet more Esperantists use the non-standard "ri" than there are speakers of Ido (based on the wiki entry).

It would make sense for ido to correct the asymmetrical treatment of sexes, but that seems to me like a very trivial concern that vir- is a prefix and -in is a postfix. I mean, all words are already sex neutral in Esperanto, except for those words that are inherently sex-related (man/woman, aunt/uncle, etc.). I suppose knabo/knabino is an exception, but infano is the gender-neutral word for a child. Yes, this was not the original design, but the language has evolved in this area.

Distinguishing based on physical sex is not equivalent to sexism, fyi.

thyrolf (Montri la profilon) 2019-januaro-29 09:33:59

I tend to use:

ri as a sex-neutral pronoun
-ul- as a masculine suffix
-in- as a feminine suffix
ge- as a sex-neutral personifiying affix, if the substantive is derived ekz. de akjective
(which looks a bit strange, I admit, and I do not insist)

bovulo
bovino
bovo

deriving from adjective:
fortulo
fortino
geforto (the strange one)

sergejm (Montri la profilon) 2019-januaro-29 16:36:20

thyrolf:I tend to use:

ri as a sex-neutral pronoun
-ul- as a masculine suffix
-in- as a feminine suffix
ge- as a sex-neutral personifiying affix, if the substantive is derived ekz. de akjective
(which looks a bit strange, I admit, and I do not insist)

bovulo
bovino
bovo

deriving from adjective:
fortulo
fortino
geforto (the strange one)
Nenio nova - vi estas idisto.

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