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Is -in actually illogical?

de Oŝo-Jabe, 25 janvier 2010

Messages : 18

Langue: English

Oŝo-Jabe (Voir le profil) 25 janvier 2010 05:13:56

Erinja, didn't want the "I should've brought...?" thread getting derailed, so I thought I'd start a this thread for the discussion, in order to stop that possibility, before it emerged.

erinja:Esperanto sometimes works in a somewhat less logical way than its advertising would suggest. For example, a woman [vir/in/o] is not a female man
While, I fully agree that Esperanto is not always as logical as it's advertising would suggest, I do not view -in as terribly illogical. If you viewed words as having "hidden" in them more general words, viro could be said to be vir(hom)o. The prefix -in in this case, then replaces those parts of the word's meanings, that it contradicts, while preserving the one that it doesn't.

vir/o = vir/hom/o
vir/o + /in/ = vir/hom/o - vir/ + /in/ = hom/in/o

It's not illogical, just a different sort of "notation." A different way to represent the same idea. It's just like how math notation is largely arbitrary. It basically comes down to tradition telling us that what we write as x after a square root symbol is r such that r^2=x, or in this case that for a masculine root, the suffix -in replaces any masculine meaning of the word with a feminine one.

Or am I just overanalyzing an aspect of the language that is essentially illogical?

ceigered (Voir le profil) 25 janvier 2010 05:23:00

It ain't addressed to me but as we all know I can't shutup so I'll force my 5¢ worth into that collection container! lango.gif

I think it is illogical and should be in-. Same with et, eg, etc. But the problem with that is that it wouldn't be internationally recognisable, as in tends to come after the noun (Freudin) and same with ette (dudette)/eta etc.

PaulExcoff (Voir le profil) 25 janvier 2010 05:56:14

I don't think it's very logical to have every root be male and have it modified by -in to make it female. I think every root should be gender neutral and there should be a male and female suffix. It seems sexist to have every noun be, by default, male. (although I'm glad as hell that every noun isn't arbitrarily assigned masculinity or femininity as in French)

IberianWolf (Voir le profil) 25 janvier 2010 06:04:16

it also happens in natural languages. the same way that in portuguese a group of man AND women, even if just two, are referred to in the masculine form "eles", and only if they're all women will they be called "elas". I guess it makes sense taking into account our patriarchal society. it is only sexist if we want it to be. I like to view it as a more practical approach to getting the meaning across.

wouldn't having every word be neutral and then have one more suffix be a lot more complicated? it would also make words longer. what if you didn't use one of the suffixes, would we need gender-neutral pronouns?

in portuguese some things are kinda neutral, but not in a way that could be used in Esperanto. for example, "gato" and "gata". they both use "gat-" so you know it's a cat, and then -o for male and -a for female. however, the species are called "gato".

ceigered (Voir le profil) 25 janvier 2010 08:06:35

Regarding gender in languages, feminine pronouns and nouns etc seemed to have been an innovation back in the day to describe female things in agriculture, or at least that's my take on it. I mean, think about it, if the farmer wants to know whether he's dealing with a male or female animal which he wants to breed, it's a heck of a lot more efficient if you've got a word for each gender of the animal. Maybe this started with simple endings, but it seems as if old forms in language eventually got reused to mean female or male equivalents of things and eventually we end up with completely unrelated words like in English - Cow and Bull.

Regarding Niko-Tina's observation -
Most of the languages I know have this paradigm of using the masculin form of words to show neutrality/plurality of sexes.
This is probably because (according to my understanding) the "masculine" form was originally used neutrally in many languages. English's "he" is a great, albeit considerably more recent example. Then, over time in different languages (considering that 3rd person pronouns are fairly new, the gender differences may have already existed) a "feminine" equivalent is created for some odd reason or another, which makes the original neutral form the default for masculine people, and therefore the "masculine" variant of the pronoun.

Why women get their own pronoun? Maybe because people are actually matriarchal (think about who is the biggest influence on a child and therefore a person when they grow up)? okulumo.gif

PaulExcoff (Voir le profil) 25 janvier 2010 08:57:05

IberianWolf:wouldn't having every word be neutral and then have one more suffix be a lot more complicated? it would also make words longer. what if you didn't use one of the suffixes, would we need gender-neutral pronouns?
It wouldn't make words longer if you don't specify gender with every single word. It would actually make words shorter because you wouldn't be required to constantly add -in to every noun referring to a woman after you've established you're talking about a woman. You don't need to constantly re-inform whoever is listening to you of the gender of who you are talking about.

Also, 'ĝi' can be used gender-neutrally to refer to people, like a first person 'ili'. Although when in the mindset of English or another language it may seem offensive to call a person 'it,' but the meaning of 'ĝi' is a bit different than 'it.'

Miland (Voir le profil) 25 janvier 2010 13:09:01

The Fundamento Vortaro defines in' as "the ending of feminine words". If we interpret this as the "female form of", then virino seems illogical. But if we can also interpret it as "the female counterpart of" that is another matter. So to be able to regard in' as logical, we need to allow it to have either of two possible meanings.

Donniedillon (Voir le profil) 25 janvier 2010 14:38:44

The way I see it, the -o ending is usually neutral except when dealing directly with human beings. For example, if someone were to ask me about my pets I wouls reply "I have 3 cats." Cats is a neutral word meaning little fuzzy critters that sit on my lap. In epseranto I would reply "Mi havas tri catojn." Again, I would understand "catoj" to be neutral. I could always elaborate and say "Mi havas 3 catojn, 1 vircato kaj 2catinoj."
So far as I can tell, the only time the -o ending is assumed to be masculine is when dealing directly with human beings ex. viro, knabo, onklo, etc.
Even in other social situations like profession I do not find the -o ending biased. For example, someone asks "Kiu estas Escher?" I would reply "Li estas artisto." I would not understand the word "artisto" to be the male identifier, but the context of "Li."
When someone askes me about my profession I usually reply "virflegisto." I answer this way because I do not assume the -o to indicate that all nurses are men.
I can live with a few -ino endings for family members etc., because the way I see it the -o ending is fine (and neutral) the way it is.

tommjames (Voir le profil) 25 janvier 2010 14:49:13

PaulExcoff:It seems sexist to have every noun be, by default, male. (although I'm glad as hell that every noun isn't arbitrarily assigned masculinity or femininity as in French)
Nouns are not male by default in Esperanto, they can be either male, female or gender neutral (the latter being the biggest group). Esperanto doesn't have any grammatical gender; any gender that exists is just a matter of the meaning of the word. For example words like frato, viro and knabo are male, but words like damo, matrono and madono are female. Gender neutral words like besto, homo, amiko etc do not default to male and do not require usage of -in and ge- to unmasculate them, although it can be useful to use those suffixes as well as vir- if you want to explicitly show gender for clarificatory purposes (perhaps to avoid people mistakenly thinking you're referring to a male when you're not!) PMEG has further reading about that.

Personally I've never understood the sexism argument. Just because we derive a few words like "patrino" from "patro" it doesn't follow that females are mere derivatives of men. And even if it did, what's so bad about being derived from something? And what makes "being the default" so great anyway? These seem like strange assumptions to me.

Oŝo-Jabe (Voir le profil) 25 janvier 2010 18:40:10

Miland:The Fundamento Vortaro defines in' as "the ending of feminine words". If we interpret this as the "female form of", then virino seems illogical. But if we can also interpret it as "the female counterpart of" that is another matter. So to be able to regard in' as logical, we need to allow it to have either of two possible meanings.
This is more-so what I was getting into, when I started this thread. I was wondering if "female father" was illogical or just an inherintly different but equally logical way of saying "mother."

niko-tina:It just happens that the meanings of "neutral" and "masculine" share the same form, but that doesn't mean that the language is "machista".
No they don't. Sometimes neutral words take a masculine meaning from context (koko kaj kokino = rooster and hen) but the only way to make a neutral word firmly male is to add "vir-" (virkoko = rooster.)

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