Re: Gender and relationship words

["Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <lojbab@lojban.org>]

At 09:06 PM 10/2/99 -0400, David Brookshire Conner wrote:
>What I've noticed recently (in English, talking with friends), is that
>there's a whole lot of relationships (at least, for me) that I have or
>friends of mine have that just don't have a good word in English.
>
>Maybe it's my relative tyro status, but I'm having some difficulty
>coming up with the lojban names for these relationships (clearly, I'm
>not thinking in lojban yet).  Yet I have this gut feeling that lojban
>can state these things, very precisely.

Yes and no.  The question is whether you want to be precise.

>For example, "transsexual". Female to male? Male to female? Pre or
>post-op? If pre, by choice or by situation? In English, some of these
>get jargon terms in queer communities (e.g., transman, transwoman).

tanru basis: woman-become-man for male to female (or past-man-woman)
reverse the genders for the other direction.

>Another example, in English, the phrase "my wife's girlfriend" is perhaps
>startling, but also unclear in meaning - is this just a friend who is
>female? Or does my wife sleep with this friend? Is this something that
>is part of our family structure? Or is it something clandestine?

pendo does not indicate a sexual relationship no matter what genders are 
involved.  If you wantto imply a sexual relationship you must explicitly 
add cinse or when appropriate gletu.  So my spouse's female-friend is fine.

More complicated might be teenage "going-with" relationships.  My 13 year 
old flirts and is flirted with by half the boys in her school, has at any 
given time one "boyfriend", but this seems to change every few weeks, and 
hopefully is well short of gletu.  I would probably use special-friend, or 
special-boy-friend, or even special-sexual-friend.

>Another example: my friend's child.

If you are of the same generation as your friend, in Lojban you are a 
metaphorical  uncle.  So he is a friend-nephew or friend-se-uncle

lojbab
----
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