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The problem with choosing Esperanto is that you are immediately assailed with questions about why you didn't choose a conlang which is more recent and, therefor

by msla 7y ago

The problem with choosing Esperanto is that you are immediately assailed with questions about why you didn't choose a conlang which is more recent and, therefore, not as inherently sexist: > A “mother” is a “fatheress” (patrino), a “girl” is a “boyess” (knabino), a “woman” is a “maness” (virino, which also happens to be the word for a kind of hypothetical mini‐virus), and so on with brotheresses, husbandesses, unclesses, cousinesses, nephewesses, and sonesses‐in‐law – a sex‐obsessed set of kinship terms incompatible with the systems traditionally used in many other cultures. Vietnamese, for instance, has a common monosyllable em meaning “younger sibling(s)”, which is an idea that Esperantists need a whole phrase to express. There is a prefix ge‑ to indicate “both sexes”, as in gepatroj = “parents”, but it's still a matter of some debate whether you can use it in the singular, or to refer to a group of parents who might all happen to be women. Only one clearly neutral noun exists: homo = “person” (cf. French homme = “man”). Even the affix ‑ul, although glossed as “person”, is widely treated as male by default; if it wasn't, “young people” would always be junuloj instead of junuloj kaj junulinoj! http://jbr.me.uk/ranto/e.html http://jbr.me.uk/ranto/e.html It's hard to blame Zamenhof for this: He was working in 19th Century Europe where this kind of thing was even more invisible than it is today. However, consciously choosing a language with that flaw in the 21st Century is tin-eared, especially if you do it explicitly in the name of inclusivity.

taejo 7y ago
> Only one clearly neutral noun exists: homo = “person” (cf. French homme = “man”). Even the affix ‑ul, although glossed as “person”, is widely treated as male by default; if it wasn't, “young people” would always be junuloj instead of junuloj kaj junulinoj! The language evolves. The gender system of modern Esperanto is remarkably similar to English: pronouns are he/she/it depending on the gender and animacy of the referent; nouns don't have grammatical gender, but may refer to a gendered class of people or animals (mostly family relations, but also a few relatively rare terms like duke, duchess, abbot, abbess, steer, cock). The vast majority of nouns are what the Complete Handbook of Esperanto Grammar (PMEG) calls "sekse neutraj radikoj" (sexually neutral roots), and most speakers today treat these as completely gender neutral, referring to any individual, and many have done so since the early 20th century, in contrast to the "traditional" use of the "-in" suffix when referring to an individual woman or groups of only women.
- msla 7y ago
  > The language evolves. Conlangs aren't meant to evolve, especially not IALs. That's how you get dialects, and soon you're right back to where you started. The whole point of having an artificial language as your IAL is that it's rational, planned, and unchanging; it's the same language at all times, in all places, as opposed to a natural IAL like English, which has regional and national variants and evolves over time sufficiently to make statements mean different things in different decades.
  - taejo 7y ago
    And yet it does move. So you want a language that never changes, but also perfectly matches today's mores? And you want enough people to speak it that it lasts multiple decades?
    - msla 7y ago
      > So you want a language that never changes, but also perfectly matches today's mores? And you want enough people to speak it that it lasts multiple decades? That's what the Esperantists want. I'm the one who's saying it's impossible.

by msla 7y ago

taejo 7y ago

> Only one clearly neutral noun exists: homo = “person” (cf. French homme = “man”). Even the affix ‑ul, although glossed as “person”, is widely treated as male by default; if it wasn't, “young people” would always be junuloj instead of junuloj kaj junulinoj! The language evolves. The gender system of modern Esperanto is remarkably similar to English: pronouns are he/she/it depending on the gender and animacy of the referent; nouns don't have grammatical gender, but may refer to a gendered class of people or animals (mostly family relations, but also a few relatively rare terms like duke, duchess, abbot, abbess, steer, cock). The vast majority of nouns are what the Complete Handbook of Esperanto Grammar (PMEG) calls "sekse neutraj radikoj" (sexually neutral roots), and most speakers today treat these as completely gender neutral, referring to any individual, and many have done so since the early 20th century, in contrast to the "traditional" use of the "-in" suffix when referring to an individual woman or groups of only women.

msla 7y ago
> The language evolves. Conlangs aren't meant to evolve, especially not IALs. That's how you get dialects, and soon you're right back to where you started. The whole point of having an artificial language as your IAL is that it's rational, planned, and unchanging; it's the same language at all times, in all places, as opposed to a natural IAL like English, which has regional and national variants and evolves over time sufficiently to make statements mean different things in different decades.
- taejo 7y ago
  And yet it does move. So you want a language that never changes, but also perfectly matches today's mores? And you want enough people to speak it that it lasts multiple decades?
  - msla 7y ago
    > So you want a language that never changes, but also perfectly matches today's mores? And you want enough people to speak it that it lasts multiple decades? That's what the Esperantists want. I'm the one who's saying it's impossible.