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user-inactivated  ·  2892 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Fun with language: Esperanto

    patro, "father" --> patrino, "mother"

    viro, "man" --> virino, "woman"

That, right there, is really weird. A mother is not merely a feminine variant of a father: there are very distinct functions applied to a mother, like giving birth and feeding children with her milk, that a father can't do (barring extraordinary circumstances). It's fitting in male gay couples where one is more masculine and another is more feminine, but I don't see that kind of vocabulary working for me.

    Granda (big) --> malgranda (small)

    Rapida (fast) --> malrapida (slow)

Same goes for this one.

I feel like that grammar sacrifices essential distinctions for simplicity. "Small" is not lacking in bigness. Again, I can see that grammatical form working when expectations haven't been met ("it's not-big-enough; it's too small"). "Universal" doesn't mean "so simple as to forego basic logic".

Forgive my ranting. I've spent the last two days trying to rest, to no avail.