Non-binary gender #2

New Issue

cadey · 2020-05-26T02:39:16Z

cadey commented

2020-05-26 02:39:16 +00:00

Changes Being Made to L'ewa

Early on, I mentioned that family terms were gendered. This also ended up with
me making some gendered terms for people. I have since refactored out all of the
gendered terms in favor of more universal terms. Here is a table of some of the
terms that have been replaced:

English	L'ewa term	L'ewa word
brother/sister	sibling	xinga
mother/father	parent	pa'ma
grandfather/grandmother	grandparent	gra'u
aunt/uncle	parent	pa'ma
cousin	sibling	xinga
man/woman	Creator	kirta
man/woman	human	renma

In some senses, gender exists. In other senses, gender does not. With L'ewa I
want to explore what is possible with language. It would be interesting to
create a language where gender can be discussed as it is, not as the categories
that it has historically fit into. Consider colors. There are millions of
colors, all sightly different but many follow general patterns. No one or two
colors can be thought of as the "default" color, yet we can have long and
meaningful conversations about what color is and what separates colors from
eachother.

I aim to have the same kind of granularity in L'ewa. As a goal of the language,
I should be able to point to any content word in the dictionary and be able to
say "that's my gender" in the same way I can describe color or music with that
tree. These will implicitly be metaphors (which does detract a bit from the
logical stance L'ewa normally takes) because gender is almost always a metaphor
in practice. L'ewa will not have binary gender.

## Changes Being Made to L'ewa Early on, I mentioned that family terms were gendered. This also ended up with me making some gendered terms for people. I have since refactored out all of the gendered terms in favor of more universal terms. Here is a table of some of the terms that have been replaced: | English | L'ewa term | L'ewa word | |-------------------------|-------------|------------| | brother/sister | sibling | xinga | | mother/father | parent | pa'ma | | grandfather/grandmother | grandparent | gra'u | | aunt/uncle | parent | pa'ma | | cousin | sibling | xinga | | man/woman | Creator | kirta | | man/woman | human | renma | In some senses, gender exists. In other senses, gender does not. With L'ewa I want to explore what is possible with language. It would be interesting to create a language where gender can be discussed as it is, not as the categories that it has historically fit into. Consider colors. There are millions of colors, all sightly different but many follow general patterns. No one or two colors can be thought of as the "default" color, yet we can have long and meaningful conversations about what color is and what separates colors from eachother. I aim to have the same kind of granularity in L'ewa. As a goal of the language, I should be able to point to any content word in the dictionary and be able to say "that's my gender" in the same way I can describe color or music with that tree. These will implicitly be metaphors (which does detract a bit from the logical stance L'ewa normally takes) because gender is almost always a metaphor in practice. L'ewa will not have binary gender.

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Reference: cadey/lewa#2