From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Thu Sep 22 19:14:31 2005 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Thu, 22 Sep 2005 19:14:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.52) id 1EId55-00056x-Mm for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Thu, 22 Sep 2005 19:14:31 -0700 Received: from mxfep02.bredband.com ([195.54.107.73]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.52) id 1EId51-00056p-Bx for lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org; Thu, 22 Sep 2005 19:14:31 -0700 Received: from [85.226.149.87] ([85.226.149.87] [85.226.149.87]) by mxfep02.bredband.com with ESMTP id <20050923021425.JGLL11792.mxfep02.bredband.com@[85.226.149.87]> for ; Fri, 23 Sep 2005 04:14:25 +0200 Message-ID: <43336307.8020301@handgranat.org> Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2005 04:05:59 +0200 From: Sunnan User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.2 (X11/20050404) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: gendered and gender-neutral language References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: -2.6 (--) X-archive-position: 2270 X-Approved-By: sunnan@handgranat.org X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-original-sender: sunnan@handgranat.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-list: lojban-beginners The ability to use somewhat non-sexist language was the only(!) reason I chose to study lojban. Lojban is a beautiful language, but that was the thing that I was specifically looking for in a language. I was kind of dissappointed upon finding mamta and patfu in the language, as well as finding several slightly sexist or at least gender-specific examples in _Lojban for beginners_. Then again, having the capability to be gender specific in a language (which lojban provides to a sufficient extent, IMHO) isn't necessarily a showstopper; just as long as you can be non-sexist without effort or awkwardness. For example, I look forward to writing non-sexist, sexually explicit literature, something which is possible using lojban but few other languages. One of my fears is that the existance of words like tixnu and mamta will make it sound awkward to use words like panzi and rirni. YMMV. pe'a mi tamne rodo.i'o lo lojbo bangu .i.a'o sarxe mi'e snan