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How do I contribute with my own radix to the Esperanto vocabulary?

de Zvoc47, 2017-januaro-25

Mesaĝoj: 26

Lingvo: English

Zvoc47 (Montri la profilon) 2017-januaro-28 23:14:04

Vestitor:There's clearly a lot of rubbish and nonsense surrounding Esperanto; simply because it is considered the language of 'the people'. A sort of open-source software of the language world where everyone feels an amazing urge to put their stamp on it.

Personally I've never encountered a language where so many people involved in it are obsessed with its relation to linguistics and all the endless drivel about what's authoritative, what's in and not in the 'PIV'. There's way more analysis than necessary. It's no wonder there's more people who know more about the language than have mastery of it.

Go to any forum dedicated to learning other languages and this sort of thing almost never appears, apart from the hard-core geeks.
This is because Esperanto is supposed to be a neutral language, but to some people (including me), having male nouns be primary and having female nouns add a suffix is not neutral as men look supreme to women while a woman is like a secondary man or something. In my opinion, there should be a male noun, a female noun and a gender-neutral noun. So I'd say patro, matro, parento. I know this problem very well. In Croatia, every single person believes in their own way how Croatian should be spoken. This is a problem. What would truly be a neutral language is a language that everyone wants to speak and learn and work on, and that would be a language with such a flexible syntax and neutral forms for everything all on a greater magnitude than of Esperanto.

Vestitor (Montri la profilon) 2017-januaro-29 13:43:21

The constant mistake being made is jumping on the idea that patr-ino (and like nouns) implies subjugation rather than mere simplicity. In any case has altering nouns in the manner suggested ever actually resulted in social equality? It's illusory. You could just as well argue that all the 'la' nouns in Spanish imply a second rank of nouns, so abolish them and make everything 'el' or 'la' or some other invented version. What is achieved? The supposed relation between social equality/social recognition and language is not as solid as is being implied.

A language full of non-sensitive vagaries so as not to offend anyone's particular sensibilities is a complicated mess. Like I said already, everyone wants a personalised version of Esperanto, which is actually nothing even approaching a universality or even a language since the latter relies upon some sort of agreement in usage.

Kirilo81 (Montri la profilon) 2017-januaro-30 09:16:28

bartlett22183:I just do not understand what is the offense if so so many(!!!) roots have been added to the Unua Libro over the years and yet this harmless extension of a long existing morpheme is not allowable. People, what is the problem?!?!?
It would not be a mere extension, in fact it would turn around the original meaning: Traditionally, ge- means "of both sexes", the ge- used by some in words like *gepatro means "of undefined sex". This is the first problem. The second is, as @Angel already said, that it would become unclear whether gepatroj would mean "father(s) and mother(s)" or "parents".

@vestitor is totally right that politically motivated changes in language use in most cases are unnecessary and without use, hence only symbolical.
I don't second the itroduction of neutral roots for the sake of symbolic equality, but for exclusively linguistic reasons: The system as is is asymmetric and opaque, hence complicated, which is not desirable for a planned language.

sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2017-januaro-30 13:03:36

The extension of the use of 'ge' to apply to a single (unuopa) person is a welcome and economical addition to the language.

Since a person is usually of a determinate sex, 'gepatro' or 'gefrato' is hardly likely to be understood in context as an hermaphrodite, but rather as parent or sibling.

And 'infanoj sub la aĝo de 5 devas esti akompanataj de siaj gepatroj' is hardly likely to cause any problem even if the parents are lesbians.

Esperanto isn't a fossil. Things move on.

Ĉu vi bonege dormis or Ĉu vi bone ge-dormis?

Zvoc47 (Montri la profilon) 2017-januaro-30 16:04:05

What I believe that ge- means is any gender. So if you say "Kiom da gefratoj vi havas?", you're saying "How many siblings do you have?" and the answer can be any number of brothers and sisters.

P.S. I haven't been practicing da/de so I forgot when to use which preposition when I'm not saying "How many kilograms of sugar?", but instead just a noun without "of".

Vestitor (Montri la profilon) 2017-januaro-30 21:26:39

'Beats' it? What is the actual point of a word like geonklo anyway?

If the language really is living then necessity ought to provide words - though English in its dominant position doesn't seem to have done so (according to what you suggest).

Vestitor (Montri la profilon) 2017-januaro-30 21:41:43

It doesn't look advantageous and is it a special advantage in Esperanto? It looks to me like the same issue in every language.

I'm not being hostile to non-binary issues; the thing is I don't think it warrants an overhaul of languages in the way suggested. I don't know how far Esperanto is supposed to travel in its role as an intermediary language: does it have to officially cater to every socio-political situation?

Vestitor (Montri la profilon) 2017-januaro-30 22:14:07

I don't think it's Esperanto's official job to find a solution. If people start using it and it catches on, it's all well and good, but I'm sceptical. Perhaps it could be argued that some sort of special measure is needed to lead the way on linguistic non-binary issues, but I don't think that is Esperanto's task and who is to carry it out anyway?

sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2017-januaro-31 13:41:25

The meanings of compound words in Esperanto are not just produced by some sort of strict algebraic derivation based on the meanings of the individual elements.

It's all more pragmatic than that.

Thus Ĉu vi jam matenmanĝis means Have you had breakfast yet? - not Have you eaten this morning?.

Given the established usage of 'gepatroj', the question is what would the (less used) singular form 'gepatro' be a convenient label for - or to put it another way, what would it immediately suggest to the average speaker familiar with 'gepatroj'.

Obviously gepatro is one of the gepatroj.

And nobody is going to get confused about the meaning of 'gepatroj' by the use of the singular form.

Kirilo81 (Montri la profilon) 2017-februaro-01 20:03:38

sudanglo:Obviously gepatro is one of the gepatroj.

And nobody is going to get confused about the meaning of 'gepatroj' by the use of the singular form.
Nice claims, but they don't convince me.
For others it may be obvious that gepatro is a hermaphrodite (I once saw in a dictionary geulo with this very translation).

The use of the forms with ge- in a more or less neutral meaning is merely a surrogate caused by the lack of a better solution.
But as soon as you take a neutral root like infan- the meaning "both sexes" can strongly be felt: infanoj - geinfanoj.

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