Mark Hovila | Re: [LFN] el
George,
OK, I understand, and you make good points. It never occurred to me that the words "he" and "she" were sexist in any way, any more than "man" or "woman" are sexist. But it is true that when referring to a person generically, the words "he" and "him" are used a lot more often than "she" and "her." We can get around this by using a neutral term like "one" or "they," but neither of those words seem entirely satisfactory, at least to me.
I suppose one way to deal with it would be to have a neutral pronoun in addition to, rather than instead of, the male and female pronouns. For instance, in LFN you could have elo, ela and el or something like that. I think this would remove any argument about sexism and still allow a little more precision when desired. And maybe a little more "romance" for poetic purposes, too. It's interesting that all of the Romance languages have this pronoun distinction.
But it's probably not important, and I'm not suggesting you change it. If you like it the way it is, who am I to say otherwise? You've done a fantastic job with this language. It is much more beautiful than Esperanto, IMO, and it is a lot easier to read. I just wish LFN would get more attention.
Mark
On Mar 19, 2013, at 6:20 AM, George Boeree wrote:
> Here's a lengthy answer:
>
> We decided from the beginning that, in today's world, the pronoun distinction between males and females encouraged a sexist view and was totally unnecessary. We don't have separate pronouns for people of different races, do we? We don't ask "how can you tell if "el" refers to a white person or a black person?" Nobody but a few nasty bigots wants that!
>
> Many languages get along just fine without gender specific pronouns:
> *Some Indoeuropean languages (Persian, Pashto, Armenian)
> *Uralic languages (eg Finnish, Hungarian)
> *Altaic languages (eg Turkish, Mongolian)
> *Georgian
> *Korean
> *Japanese
> *Chinese, Burmese
> *Vietnamese, Khmer
> *Thai, Lao
> *Indonesian, Malay, Javan, Tagalog, Polynesian languages
>
> LFN pronouns are used similarly to Basque and American Indian languages: animate (people, higher animals) vs. inanimate (lower animals, things, ideas)
>
> You have to remember that third person pronouns always refer to something or someone already mentioned or indicated. The context and situation usually clarify what you intended. For example, in "la xico ia besa la xica. donce, el embrasa el", you automatically realize that the first "el" refers to the boy and the second to the girl.
>
> When the need arises, you can use "el" to refer to the contextually more important person, and use a noun for the other. "la fem", "la om", "la xica", "la xico" are the most common ones, but you can use any other descriptor or a name. See our literature for examples!
>
> On Mar 19, 2013, at 3:37 AM, mkhovila wrote:
>
> > Why is "el" used for both "he/him" and "she/her"? How do you translate a sentence like:
> >
> > "El dona la gato a el."
> >
> > How do you know if it means "He gives the cat to her" or "She gives the cat to him"?
> >
> > Mark
> >
>
> ----------
>
> George Boeree
> cgboeree@...
>
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