From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Esperanto's embedded sexism
Date: 16 Aug 92 00:29:20 -0600
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <1992Aug14.162847.42358@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>, miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
> In article <y8cHPB1w164w@jwt.UUCP>, bbs-hrick@jwt.UUCP (Rick Harrison) writes:
> As for affixes, Esperanto 'patrino' no more means 'female father'
> than English 'princess' means 'female prince.'  Female fathers and
> female princes do not exist.  Notice further that if they did exist,
> these words COULD NOT be used to refer to them; we would have to 
> find new words or paraphrases.

True but irrelevant.  The point is that _patrino_, like (most? all?)
nouns referring to females, is *formed* in exactly the way that a
word for 'female father' would be.  Furthermore, since the supposed
point of Esperanto word formation rules is that the meaning of a
word is to be discovered by the less than fluent by picking it
apart, an intermediate semantic representation 'female father' is
in fact *expected*.  Only after this is rejected as nonsensical can
someone encountering the word for the first time arrive at the
correct 'mother'.
 
> If people insist on finding "meaning" in the historical accidents of
> word-formation (technically known as the etymological fallacy), then
> two things follow: (a) they are not talking about meaning in the 
> usual sense (what speakers intend to convey and what hearers possibly
> understand); and (b) all human languages will have to be rebuilt from
> the ground up.

This point holds only for natural languages.  The new Esperantist is
precisely supposed to find meaning in the -in- suffix, just as the
learner of English is supposed to find meaning in -ing, -(e)s, etc.

>>>Esperanto should be able to surmount this; it HAS no excuse of 
>>>"historical value" or even "habit" to explain it.  
> 
> Esperanto is not an a priori constructed language; it inherits the
> histories of its sources.  It could not have been otherwise.

Come, come!  Not one of its sources derives 'mother' from 'father'
via an affix.  That was Zamenhof's decision, and it certainly could
have been otherwise.
 
>>>Zamenhof plainly 
>>>thought that the father was basic and the mother a variant on him.  
> 
> The etymological fallacy: we can conclude nothing about what he
> thought from his word-formations.

We certainly can conclude that he thought maleness was "basic" and
femaleness somehow less basic, or a least less worthy of being taken
seriously.

As for Zamenhof's "European" sources: he selected the German version:
feminize via a suffix -in.  He could just as well have selected the
Spanish-Italian version; this would have yielded *patro 'father' vs.
*patra 'mother'.  And again from Romance, -in- would have made a fine
adjective formant.  How about: *patrin 'parental', *patrino 'fatherly',
*patrina 'motherly'?  Zamenhof's actual choices are difficult for us
to swallow.  Why would anyone who knows e.g. German want to learn
a language where 'girl' is _knabino_, "boy-ess" (cf. German _Knabe_
'boy')?

Please do not think I am *blaming* him an any way.  His choices
reflect the social attitudes of that age and many others, and few
of us can rise above them.  But they show in his language, which
is unpleasant enough anyway.

Of course, the whole discussion is otiose.  The world has made its
choice. It's learning English, not Esperanto.

--Leo Connolly
Newsgroups: sci.lang