From: nsn@ee.mu.OZ.AU (Nick Nicholas)
Subject: Re: [Anglolingvo/English] easy to learn English?
Organization: Electronic and Electrical Engineering - University of Melbourne 
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 15:04:44 GMT

I know I'm gonna regret this...
cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:
>brewer@sol.cs.wmich.edu (Steve Brewer) writes:
>>(Janis Maria Cortese) writes (in slightly edited form):
>>>>>And I'd rather not speak a language that classifies my mom as a female
>>>>>father, thank you.
>>>I do not think I am being unjust.  My mom is my mom, not my Mrs. Dad.
>>>My dad is my dad, not some word kernel.  

Which is just as true in Esperanto. You know what a dead metaphor is, yes?

(Of course, you're a human, not some word kernel. So you have nothing to
do with human-ity. But I'm getting off the point here...)

>>>Anyhow, I don't like a language that relegates an entire section of
>>>humanity to a suffix.  

Whereby you are quite free to speak Ido, which did do something about this.
Still, this reminds me of a piece I read in a woman's paper, where a het
woman was addressing a lesbian: "It's alright for you --- but we've got to
deal with THEM every day."

There are women out there dealing with this "-in". *shrug* You're quite
free not to be one of them.

I find having to defend my language and my *community* tiresome. Yes, 
dammit, -in- was a mistake. And no, we can't drop it (we can try to
introduce vir- more, and erode away at the male default, but we can
only go so far --- Patrino *is* Mother, it is *not* Father-ess; we are
humans speaking this language, not robots). We are not talking intellectual
games; we are talking a language, a deep-set language, a wide-spread
language; a language that will evolve, but that will not be subjected to
a cataclsymic revolution.

>I don't have much choice there, do I?  English is sexist because it has
>built on a sexist history.  Eo doesn't have that excuse.  

Yup. But please, PLEASE try and understand --- we too do not have that
choice. Once in the community, we take the language kit and kaboodle.
And precisely because the language is artificial, because its hold
on being a REAL(tm) language is so tenuous, we reject and abhor the
"choice" to do with it that which we cannot do to natural languages:
to alter it.

>>Furthermore, words have only the meanings that we associate with them --
>>they don't have any inherent meaning at all.  If you're in great danger
>>of seeing your dad as a 'word kernel,' then perhaps Esperanto is too
>>much for you handle.  

>Excuse me while I wipe the tears of laughter from my eyes.  Language has
>in it the reality of the creator -- and Eo HAS a creator, unlike other
>natural languages.  

This is not linguistics, Janis. This is voodoo. The sign is in arbitrary
relation to the signified, Esperanto is rarely a good reality-moulder, and 
the imprint of Zamenhof on the language and its language-community is more 
complex, subtle, and tenuous than your comic-book, tacitly-Whorfian 
generalisation. Ooh, Zamenhof went agglutinative, so we're all mindless
Zamenhof-droids, and we've all got ophthalmologists' practices in run-down
parts of town...

Believe me, I'm laughing at your laughing.

>And, yes, I'm afraid it does irritate people.  "Most
>people" regard Eo with some smug amusement (not necessarily deserved but
>true)

Lovely non-sequitur, Janis. Most people regard homosexuality with smug
amusement. Most people regard linguistics with smug amusement. Most people
are dolts. (And you can quote me on that one.)

Furthermore, "most people", when learning a language, get on with it.

>and in my ling classes, when the students are introduced to the
>language, students unilaterally dislike the "patrino/fratino"
>designation.  UNILATERALLY.  And the female students aren't pleasant
>about it.

"It's alright for you --- but we've got to deal with THEM *every day*."

Consider. A means of minimising vocabulary is required. Zamenhof leaps
at the form obvious in his millieu --- deriving the feminine from
the masculine. This becomes set in the language. As political sensi-
bilities change, alternate schemes are developed to allow for the
default to be gender-neutral, and both the masculine and feminine
to be derived from them --- schemes being resisted by many. Meantime,
there are some metaphors that are just too dead, some expressions
too deep-set to be understood by decomposition, and to be replaced.
Patro does not mean parent; it means father. Patrino does not mean
fatheress; it means mother. 

What your colleagues say is immaterial; they're not the ones that do deal 
with it every day. They're laughing on the outside. We're on the inside. 
Patrino is not changing to matro any more than Woman is changing to Wofem 
("wimmin" is no counter-example; spelling is a very superficial feature of 
language.) Your colleagues would benefit from looking at gender-
interpretation in languages like Greek and Russian (with "personality"
in fem gender), rather than dwelling on their preconceived, prejudiced,
native-language-bound, smug understanding of language gendering.

>Read the Eo
>textbook that everyone uses to learn the language.  "Patro" means
>father, and the -in- suffix is specifically called the feminizing
>suffix.  "Patrino" is pretty obviously then "female-father."

After that, go out and experience Esperanto as it is used and experienced
in a language-community. And come back and tell me it's female-father.
(In any case, the proper textbooks speak --- more consistently --- of
a null sign for masculines. The parent interpretation for patro has
been suppressed, but if not latent there, the form gepatro[j], for
parent, makes no sense (fathers of both sexes?) In less dead metaphors,
this is obvious: sekretario, [vir]sekretario, sekretariino.)

It costs you nothing to stand on the outside and slag off the language
we speak, our life-blood, our world-expresser. Us, it costs. We are
a community. We are a body. We are not here for your amusement. We are
not here for you at all. We have our words; we use them. Don't like our
words. But don't presume to know more about our words (or us) than we do.
And don't pooh-pooh us for your classmates' amusement. We will not be so
readily dismissed.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Nicxjo (Nick) Nicholas					nsn@munagin.ee.mu.oz.AU
Fakoj de Komputscienco kaj Elektronika Ingxenieriko
Universitato de Melburno, Auxstralio.			"Dirlididi!" - piv
Organization: Cntr for Design of Educational Computing, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA