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> In Esperanto nouns are male gendered by default, and a suffix is used to make them female. (e.g la patro means "the father", and la patrino means "the mother"

by wnoise 9y ago

> In Esperanto nouns are male gendered by default, and a suffix is used to make them female. (e.g la patro means "the father", and la patrino means "the mother"). Unfortunately, that is indeed the common usage, but it would be equally consistent with the affixes and structure of the language to use patro for parent, virpatro for father, and patrino for mother. i.e. the sexism is strictly speaking a cultural problem, not a language problem.

ruricolist 9y ago
"Patrulo" would also work. "Ino" and "ulo" are practically redundant, which makes it (I think) the easiest way to sneak in a masculating affix.
- wnoise 9y ago
  "vir-" is a preëxisting masculating prefix. I would read patrulo as "A fatherly person", rather than a parent, as "-ul-" turns an adjective into a person embodying that adjective. (ge- is the neuterizing prefix, but in my extremely limited dabbling, it's mostly seen in plurals: gepatroj for parents, but for a single parent, one generally says patro for father and patrino for mother.)
- microcolonel 9y ago
  Like some other languages, one of the two is both specifically male in some contexts, and generic in others (which is why vir- exists, to clear up confusion in otherwise-generic contexts). English even retains some irregular words of this sort, such as dog vs. bitch, where dog is male in contexts where gender matters, but bitch is female in all contexts (at least when it comes to dogs). Only one gender can get the shorter prefix, and there are only so many vowels (many people say that Esperanto already has too many vowels). Real surviving cultures aren't so petty that they'd make all their words longer by two characters for the sake of "fairness". As for -in* being two extra characters for explicit-feminine, it's just something you trade for regular conjugation with such restricted phonotactics. Now, you could make the argument to ditch grammatical gender altogether, and I'd probably be on board with that. In most cases it does not shorten or clarify sentences.
TylerE 9y ago
Wouldn't adding an extra syllable to a large subset of words indeed be a language problem?
Hendrikto 9y ago
That‘s not sexism though.
- wnoise 9y ago
  Male-by-default isn't sexism? What do you mean by sexism?

by wnoise 9y ago

ruricolist 9y ago

"Patrulo" would also work. "Ino" and "ulo" are practically redundant, which makes it (I think) the easiest way to sneak in a masculating affix.

wnoise 9y ago
"vir-" is a preëxisting masculating prefix. I would read patrulo as "A fatherly person", rather than a parent, as "-ul-" turns an adjective into a person embodying that adjective. (ge- is the neuterizing prefix, but in my extremely limited dabbling, it's mostly seen in plurals: gepatroj for parents, but for a single parent, one generally says patro for father and patrino for mother.)
microcolonel 9y ago
Like some other languages, one of the two is both specifically male in some contexts, and generic in others (which is why vir- exists, to clear up confusion in otherwise-generic contexts). English even retains some irregular words of this sort, such as dog vs. bitch, where dog is male in contexts where gender matters, but bitch is female in all contexts (at least when it comes to dogs). Only one gender can get the shorter prefix, and there are only so many vowels (many people say that Esperanto already has too many vowels). Real surviving cultures aren't so petty that they'd make all their words longer by two characters for the sake of "fairness". As for -in* being two extra characters for explicit-feminine, it's just something you trade for regular conjugation with such restricted phonotactics. Now, you could make the argument to ditch grammatical gender altogether, and I'd probably be on board with that. In most cases it does not shorten or clarify sentences.

TylerE 9y ago

Wouldn't adding an extra syllable to a large subset of words indeed be a language problem?

Hendrikto 9y ago

That‘s not sexism though.

wnoise 9y ago
Male-by-default isn't sexism? What do you mean by sexism?