From: phopkins@sol.UVic.CA (Paul Hopkins)
Subject: Re: feminine as default (summary)
Keywords: feminine generic default
Organization: University of Victoria, Victoria, B.C. CANADA
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 92 06:27:52 GMT

In article <29E63EED.8588@noiro.acs.uci.edu> cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:
>In article <1992Apr8.201054.21752@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> hermes@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Ron Szoke) writes:
>
>>>  Subject: Gender marking
>>>
>>>  In Esperanto, "father" = 'patro' while "mother" = 'patrino'.
>>>  That is, "patro" with the feminizing suffix "-ino."
>>>
>>I know that there are some Esperantists who use "matro".
>>
>THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  It's wonderful to hear other people
>disliking this term!  I can't STAND it, and was told by my tutor that I
>was the only person who didn't like calling my mom "female-father" and I
>was some kind of freak for not liking it, and I had no reason to react
>the way I did, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum.
While i agree that deriving terms for female beings from the terms for
male being is an unfortunate relict of the language's origins (among
speakers of languages such as German, Polish and Russian which very
consistently do the same), I think you are overreacting every bit as
much as your tutor.
Should the word 'Studentin' be banned from German because it is derived
from 'Student' and implies that a student is basically a _male_ student?
Maybe it would be better if the term 'Student' referred to both male and
female students in German (as it does in English), but that's unlikely
to happen because there is a tradition of distinguishing
Studenten (male) from Studentinnen (female). The same is true for the
pair patro/patrino in Esperanto. People have been using the term patrino
to designate a mother for over a century, so insisting on making a new
word 'matro' to replace 'patrino' is about as sensible as insisting that
Germans say 'Va"terin' instead of 'Mutter' to preserve the symmetry of
male/female terms in the language. In order to become and remain a
living language, a language must develop a terminology recognised by all
members of the speech community, at least for basic vocabulary items
(such as mother/patrino).
>I'm thriled to hear that there are Esperantists who use "matro," just as
>I do when I use the language.  I also use "soro" instead of fratino,
>and "femo" for "virino."  
So you have been using these terms, and your conversants do not, right? 
Aren't you running the risk of not being understood? Or are you
assuming that your conversants speak a Latinate language with terms like
matr- for mother and sor- for sister (in which case, why not just use
Interlingua?)? I thought people learned Esperanto to _communicate_ with
people of _different_ ethnic origin.

>My mom and dad are my mom and dad, damn it.)
If you object to the term 'patrino' on the basis of its being a derived
term for a basic kinship relationship, do you also object to the English
word 'woman', which is a derived term (< Old English wif-man) for a very
basic category of our social (and biological!) existence?
>
>Where have you heard of Esperantists who use "matro?"  I'm very
>interested in hearing more about this. 
Yes, i'd like to know this too, although, frankly, i have been using
Esperanto very intensively for some fifteen years, and Janis is the
the only Esperantist I know who uses the term. :-)
>
paul hopkins
phopkins@sol.uvic.ca
Newsgroups: sci.lang