this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2024
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Linguistics Humor

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submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by [email protected] to c/linguistics_humor
 
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I can offer you Esperanto. No inherent gender but they got cases. And also gendered endings for people words.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea 3 points 1 week ago

Tagalog is a lot closer, the only gendered words are Spanish loan words (except maybe mom/dad), because of course they are.

Pronouns:

  • he/she - siya
  • his/her - niya

Relations (add "na lalaki" for boys, or "na babae" for girls) :

  • son/daughter - anak
  • brother/sister - kapatid
  • grandson/granddaughter - apo

In English, I ask how many brothers and sisters someone has, but in Tagalog I just ask how many siblings they are. Ilan (how many) kayong (are you) magkakapatid (siblings as a group)? They can give a simple answer, or specify boys and girls, it's great! Asking about boys/girls takes too long, so nobody bothers.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Esperanto still has those weird -in- and -iĉ- suffixes. They aren't a grammatical gender system, but... come on.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I kind of like them but I just wish the "base" was neuter e.g. avo would be grandparent, then avino could stay grandmother and something else could be grandfather. Overall I think the modularity is neat

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

i.e. optional suffixes to highlight social gender, but the default was neuter? I'd like it better than the current system, but I think that the suffixes aren't even necessary - if you need to specify the gender, you can simply plop some additional word and call it a day.

That's a piece of criticism in retrospect though. Social awareness of gender issues was way lower in Zamenhof's times than now, not really blaming him.