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Is Esperanto eurocentric and sexist?

de Pollukso_Stelfilo, 2018-novembro-16

Mesaĝoj: 82

Lingvo: English

Metsis (Montri la profilon) 2020-oktobro-08 10:27:25

Edveno,

What you put forward as a fantasy, has mostly happened.

1. Only some bittereinders use words for profession with -in. For the most instruisto estas instruisto. The field of use for the female suffix has mostly shrunk to some family members, like patrino, filino, fratino, avino, onklino. I can imagine that in a very near future the word kuzino will fall out of use, and kuzo covers all cousins.

2. Ri is such.

3. See the first point. The need to actually specify the gender is way smaller than those bittereinders think. Trust me, I speak natively a language where that distinction is not usually made.

novatago (Montri la profilon) 2020-oktobro-08 19:02:51

Metsis:Edveno,

What you put forward as a fantasy, has mostly happened.

1. Only some bittereinders use words for profession with -in. For the most instruisto estas instruisto. The field of use for the female suffix has mostly shrunk to some family members, like patrino, filino, fratino, avino, onklino. I can imagine that in a very near future the word kuzino will fall out of use, and kuzo covers all cousins.

2. Ri is such.

3. See the first point. The need to actually specify the gender is way smaller than those bittereinders think. Trust me, I speak natively a language where that distinction is not usually made.
Finland is not the world. Finnish is not Esperanto. And anyway what I see as a problem is to invent a problem. The suffix -in is Esperanto and I use it when I need it or when I want and also it's not a problem if I want to use it every single time. It just marks female gender not gives opinion about women (and it's stupid to think otherwise). Ri is not Esperanto and Esperanto doesn't need it because ĝi already makes the job.

Ĝis. Novatago (blogo / 7 + 1)

Metsis (Montri la profilon) 2020-oktobro-09 08:16:32

@novatago

I didn't claim that nor it was my intention to imply that.

I attended the UK last year (2019) and met a lot of people from different parts of the world, because I worked as a volunteer at the reception, as an errand boy for LKK, held the course for Finnish and worked as interpreter on some ekskursoj. Plus some events I attended myself (too few but I hadn't so much free time and I was quite tired in the evenings). I used UK to learn spoken Esperanto. I don't recall anyone using forms like instruistino, ĉiĉeronino, komitatanino, delegitino etc. Of course you are free to use the -in forms, but my impression is that you will be in the minority then.

I know your stand on ri. Fine by me. If you opt for ĝi, that's also fine by me.

Ciospino (Montri la profilon) 2020-oktobro-09 16:22:55

Only English speakers say the Esperanto is sexist. I don't want to offend anyone. This is just a linguistic finding. Because English speakers are not used to having genders in grammar. Assuming Esperanto is sexist, what about Latin or Italian or French? These and more languages all have gender but we cannot modified it. Using gender is a habit.

Metsis (Montri la profilon) 2020-oktobro-10 14:18:02

I'm not an English speaker, but I speak natively a language where normally such distinction is not made. A hundred years ago there were words like instruistino, but they have since then fallen out of use. I wouldn't say they feel offensive, but hilariously outdated.For instance when in Pola retradio they say artistino XX faris…, it sounds so 1800 centurian, like I were in a place that time forgot.

Ploppsy32 (Montri la profilon) 2020-oktobro-19 00:16:19

@ ciospino gender in language is different. In Esperanto femininity is added on to masculinity as opposed to being something all by itself.

Ploppsy32 (Montri la profilon) 2020-oktobro-20 01:48:40

also, in Esperanto gender/feminity is always correlated with sexual orientation while that is not the case in romance languages like Spanish.

bryku (Montri la profilon) 2020-oktobro-28 17:11:26

Ploppsy32:also, in Esperanto gender/feminity is always correlated with sexual orientation while that is not the case in romance languages like Spanish.
Nobody is forcing you to use esperanto, You don't like it, forget it.

praid (Montri la profilon) 2020-oktobro-30 17:56:33

Sed io devas noti tion, aperante sian vidpunkton al la publiko.

alighozali (Montri la profilon) 2020-decembro-24 07:55:33

Pollukso_Stelfilo:Many critics claim that Esperanto is unfit as a truly international language and far from neutral for being eurocentric and sexist.

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. Neither are langauges of Europe not belonging to the IE family taken into account, like Finnish, Hungarian and Basque nor non-European ones like Chinese, Swahili, Mongolic, Indonesian, Aztec and Aleutic.

Esperanto lacks word stems that describe female people. Instead the male words are made female with a suffix (-in).
viro -> man, virino -> woman / knabo -> boy, knabino -> girl / frato -> brother, fratino -> sister, patro -> father, patrino -> mother
and worst of all: fraŭlo -> bachelor, fraŭlino -> maid
So, it would be like saying "brothress" and "boyess" instead of sister and girl. The last example is especially strange, because "fraŭlo" is derived from German "fräulein" which means "young unmarried woman" and has no male equivalent in that language but Esperanto makes it male in its unaltered form and then female with a suffix too.

What do you lot think about this?
Yeah, as a non-IndoEuropean native speaker, I feel Esperanto is too European. If I don't recognize at least 2 different "big" European languages like English, French, German, or Spanish... I won't easily recognize the meaning of the word. Besides, some grammars are like German for the accusative which indicates the movement. But the way of creating new words by agglutination is very similar like my native tongue, so I can adapt easily.

For the sexist? Hmm, perhaps... only at some words... Honestly, I always feel cringed to use a word like patrino, fratino, knabino... Because, the basic word is for the male (patro, frato, knabo) only... It is different like in Spanish, hermana/hermano, cuz the last vowel indicates the gender, while the basic word is herman- means "the sibling". Esperanto has nothing like that. Using patrino is like saying fatheress...

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