Is "Knabvirino" a good way to say tomboy?
de ComeradeKat, 28 de julio de 2021
Aportes: 25
Idioma: English
ComeradeKat (Mostrar perfil) 28 de julio de 2021 18:29:01
is there a correct way of saying tomboy in Esperanto?
sergejm (Mostrar perfil) 28 de julio de 2021 20:50:54
Using Google Translate you can get bad translate sovaĝa kato, which means wild cat.
If you translate to Russian, you get девчонка-сорванец, which is translated bubino, but I think this is not modern meaning of tomcat.
a girl who enjoys rough, noisy activities traditionally associated with boys is translated
knabino, kiu ĝuas malglatajn, bruajn agadojn tradicie asociitajn kun knaboj
So I suppose to translate knabeca knabino = boyish girl
knabvirino = boyish woman
Another variant is to Esperantize tomboy: tombojo
Metsis (Mostrar perfil) 29 de julio de 2021 09:51:28
ComeradeKat (Mostrar perfil) 29 de julio de 2021 14:23:58
sergejm (Mostrar perfil) 29 de julio de 2021 14:33:32
knabulino: tomboy
ĉjo-knabino : tomboy, masculine lesbian, butch girl, boy dyke, butch woman
bubo : brat kid, urchin, jack (cards)
bubino : hussy, wench
And I wonder:
knabaĉo : brat - in Russian брат means brother (frato)
njo-knabo aŭ inknabo mankas tie
sergejm (Mostrar perfil) 29 de julio de 2021 15:15:53
RiotNrrd (Mostrar perfil) 31 de julio de 2021 13:44:39
sergejm (Mostrar perfil) 1 de agosto de 2021 04:15:46
RiotNrrd (Mostrar perfil) 1 de agosto de 2021 20:01:04
I don't actually know what that means.
nornen (Mostrar perfil) 1 de agosto de 2021 22:22:54
You can only attach -in to words (simple or compound) which by themselves can denote gender/sex. Those are generally words refering to humans, animals, gods, etc and those derived by -ul, -ist, -ant, -int, -ont, ktp.
Exempli gratia: knabo -> knabino; hundo -> hundino; dio -> diino; belulo -> belulino; militisto -> militistino; leganto -> legantino.
However, you cannot attach -in to words (simple or compound) which refer to objects, abstractions and other concepts that lack gender to begin with:
Exempli gratia: paco -> *pacino (peace but with a vulva); vido -> *vidino (sight but with female gametes); fenestro -> *fenestrino (a window which identifies as a 14-year old girl).
There is no morphosyntactic argument against these compound words, however semantics break down.
Now in the specific case of knabecino, the word "knabo" can denote gender (that's why knabino works), but "knabeco" is an abstract quality without any trace of gametes. Hence *knabecino would be the same as knabeco but with female gender. However boyishness cannot have gender as it doesn't refer to a human or an animal, but to an abstract concept. Now "knabeculo" again refers to a human being (which expresses boyishness; which has boyish traits) and only now you can slam the -in to the end of it.
That's why we say libremulino (a female book enthusiast) and not libremino (which would be some weird book enthusiasm (sic! not: enthusiast) which identifies as female and whose pronouns are she/her).
In my head this whole train of thought seemed a lot clearer than it came out written. Sorry.