Androg vs Andro?

[Vyn]

I notice many people shorten androgyne or androgyny to 'andro' in passing.  But, this just means man or male (andro), as the gyne (female) part is chopped off entirely.  This can be solved by saying androg instead, to indicate it is actually androgynous.

Unrelatedly, when I see androgynous misspelled as androgenous (producing only male children, concerning male hormones, androgens etc), my subconscious internal nitpicker does a somersault.  That one letter changes the meaning of the entire word to 100% male focus, and sadly it is a very common error especially outside the Genderqueer/Transgender community.  Is it just me or does it annoy other people?

Does anyone use the terms gynander or gynandrous?  This has a similar meaning to androgyne and androgynous but with a tad more female nuance, while traditionally, androgynous had a more male nuance.

[brainiac]

Personally, my subconscious internal nitpicker does a somersault when anyone is prescriptivist about language. But that's just me.

I actually was thinking about this earlier today, that shortening androgyne to andro does just mean "male". But then again, we shorten plenty of other words to only one morpheme, which doesn't encompass the meaning of the word on its own. Just some examples off the top of my head: "phone" for telephone, "bio" for biology, "admin" for administrator, "lab" for laboratory...

I think we might be more sensitive to androgyne because it seems like an unfamiliar word (so we're more likely to break it down into its parts), but I wouldn't worry about undermining what the word means with abbreviation.

[Arch]

Personally, my subconscious internal nitpicker does a somersault when anyone is prescriptivist about language. But that's just me.

Hope you're not talking about androgynous vs androgenous! (Yes, it bothers me, but at least it's not an error that leaves me puzzled about what the writer really means. Not on this site, anyway.)

An adherence to established definitions is essential for good communication. And definitions are inherently prescriptive. At least until enough people misuse a word/term often enough to actually change the language...at which point the new definition becomes prescriptive. Language is self-sealing.

[brainiac]

I wasn't. I consider written language a totally different animal than spoken language. People have every right to complain about spelling conventions and clarity of expression in writing.

But, when people attempt to apply those rules to the spoken word, that I can't stand for. More often than not, it's misguided correction that amounts to "the standard dialect is better than your dialect", which is a class thing.

And adhering to established definitions isn't prescriptive. Language has rules, yes. Descriptivism looks at all the rules that people actually use IN GENERAL equally, while prescriptivism values one set of artificial rules over others. One person using a word wrong means that they aren't using a word the same way as most other people, and that they'll probably change their usage over time to match the common usage of the word. There is no one singular correct way to use a word, particularly open-class (content) words. Definitions are not as strict and categorical as we would like to think they are.

[Pica Pica]

Aaagh, thank goodness - someone who will stand up for a descriptivist approach.

The one that really winds me up is people who nitpick grammar on forums, forums are a loose and relaxed way of communicating. I tend to think that those people are bad readers, rather than the poster a bad writer.

However the differences in spellings of various androgyne type words are important things to note, especially for a site talking about androgynes.

[Vyn]

Personally, my subconscious internal nitpicker does a somersault when anyone is prescriptivist about language. But that's just me.

The attempted focus here was contemplating accuracy/meaning not prescriptive grammar, so perhaps bad wording on my part.  This is especially true when the alternative is another word entirely with a definition near the opposite of what was intended. So that would make it an important distinction worth knowing or discussing.  The main difference to the examples you listed, is that andro+gyny needs both morphemes equally to convey its meaning.  If you take the -g- out of andro(g) , the concept of androgyny goes too, and you are left with a 100% male word, at least in theory. That's all I'm saying.  I'm not sure if the abreviation has been around long enough to be any type of standard, I've always said androg myself and I picked it up from others, and thinking about it linguistically made me type the OP.

I just wanted to see some reflection on that, as it is more a topic asking people to think about the difference rather than telling them what to do, but I digress. I think the distinction is quite pertinent to contemplate whatever one's reasons are, especially on a board dedicated to androgynes.  But I do agree with Pica that excessive nitpicking makes forum conversation too uptight and unnatural, plus it takes the fun out of things.  I should have chosen a better title than 'nitpick'!

So anyone ever use androgyny's long lost twin - gynandry?

[no_id]

Personally I usually use 'AG' as an abbreviation for 'Androgyne' or simply 'Androgyne', but of course I also use 'Andro'.

I think it has to do with the context/situation where it is used.
As someone else pointed out; forum looseness.
I'd like to top that with; the forum Susans. On this forum, in this situation/context, the word 'andro' is a reference to 'Androgyne' without question since that is how the forum context is lay-out.
Communities, forums tend to have their own lingo. Thus, in this specific situation, it is actually correct...

However, yes, in the 'outside world' terms used here can/do have different meanings, but I like to think it would actually be quite easy to give the word 'andro' a double definition in the outside world due to the lack of knowledge of 'Androgyne' as a whole..

Just some early coffee thoughts from my side.

[Vyn]

Personally I usually use 'AG' as an abbreviation for 'Androgyne' or simply 'Androgyne'.

That is pretty clever - I like it.

I'm new to this forum and its culture, so I didn't know it was established here as an abbreviation, so thanks for the info no_id.    Another place I visit has a different more literal take on it, and I was working with 'outside world' terminology.  I hope androg is equally welcome here too as that is what I am used to saying for a short form (which I rarely use anyway).

[no_id]

That is pretty clever - I like it.

I'm new to this forum and its culture, so I didn't know it was established here as an abbreviation, so thanks for the info no_id.    Another place I visit has a different more literal take on it, and I was working with 'outside world' terminology.  I hope androg is equally welcome here too as that is what I am used to saying for a short form (which I rarely use anyway).

No need for thanks; I'm hardly awake as it is.
No matter what word you will use, expect it to be welcomed.. After all, 'Unicorns' was accepted as well a while back.

[Sevan]

I think it's a matter of general acceptance. After all the term bisexual gets shortened to "bi" all the time...but if we want to be literal then we could totally lose the enire meaning of the word and ask...bi-what?

Another example would polyamory. THis word is often shorted to "poly" however...I've also seen discussions on polysexual so if we shorten just to "poly" I could also ask...poly-what?

I myself really like the word andro. I've even taken it, twisted it and made it the term to replace aunt/uncle. "Andi" So to my nephew and neice I am Andi Sevan. Instead of Aunt [birth name].

[Arch]

And adhering to established definitions isn't prescriptive.

Well, I was taught that "prescriptive" is a grammatical term that doesn't really apply to individual definitions. So I was trying to shoehorn definitions into grammar, sort of.

I'm all for allowing people to express themselves, and I feel that I shouldn't nitpick about grammar and syntax on a public forum unless meaning isn't clear. Or, sometimes I see a funny play on words and want to bring it out. I love eggcorns and other inadvertent "cleverness."

My students are a different matter, though. They enroll in a classist system (university) and then get miffed when I tell them that their writing isn't up to snuff. Some of them want to write essays as if they are posting on MySpace. Uh, no. That is something up with which I will not put.

[brainiac]

The attempted focus here was contemplating accuracy/meaning not prescriptive grammar, so perhaps bad wording on my part. 

I was just poking fun, don't worry. I do think it's a valid topic of discussion (and I mean, I WAS thinking about it on my own, so I'm glad you brought it up). And I would say that those words also technically lose their meaning-- "phone" only means sound, and "bio" only means life. But when we use these abbreviations, we take for granted that other people both know and understand the meaning of the full word. So I think you do have a valid point about just using "andro" with people who aren't familiar with the word androgyne, but perhaps in a community like ours where everyone is familiar with it, it's acceptable, like no_id and phx_rising were saying.

Aaagh, thank goodness - someone who will stand up for a descriptivist approach.

heck yes ~*~linguist love~*~

My students are a different matter, though. They enroll in a classist system (university) and then get miffed when I tell them that their writing isn't up to snuff. Some of them want to write essays as if they are posting on MySpace. Uh, no. That is something up with which I will not put.

Like I said, I totally think that writing SHOULD have a prescriptivist approach to it. Written language is inherently artificial* and very different than spoken language, and I think rules that ensure its clarity are great.

* Learning to read and write is not a "natural" thing; we have to explicitly learn how to do it and rewire our brains to process writing. There's a really awesome book called Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf on that, written for a general audience, which I would recommend to anyone interested in this sort of thing.

[no_id]

Andro seems just fine. And I like AG. But, is it pronounced ahhg or aegee? Its also used in reference to agriculture, using the ahhg pronunciation.

It's also used as an abbreviation for adjuctant general and the symbol ag for silver apparentley. I tend to pronounce it as aegee when reading/writing (out loud in my mind).

[Arch]

You can always call yourself epicene.

[Fenrir]

To be perfectly honest, when I first saw someone use the term 'andro' here, I thought they meant male until I figured it out. Was that just me, then? 
So yeah, my vote goes to AG as an abbreviation for androgyne. The relation to the abbreviation for silver is damned cool, too. (:

[Seshatneferw]

Personally, my subconscious internal nitpicker does a somersault when anyone is prescriptivist about language. But that's just me.

Heh, having done my share of usage-based linguistics as well as teaching scientific writing to undergraduate students, it's easy to sympathise with both viewpoints. (See, I'm a proper androgyne, trying to balance between the two extremes even here )

To be perfectly honest, when I first saw someone use the term 'andro' here, I thought they meant male until I figured it out. Was that just me, then? 

No, not just you -- and this is also supported by the way the boys sometimes use andro as an abbreviation of the androgens they use for HRT. Coming from the other side (even though not going all the way), it seems just a leettle uncomfortable to use the same word to describe myself...

So yeah, my vote goes to AG as an abbreviation for androgyne. The relation to the abbreviation for silver is damned cool, too. (:

Here's another vote.

  Nfr

[Pica Pica]

Gold is Au - oddly, the symbol for gold is a sun symbol, which when Reeb and I went on our publicising androgyne binge we decided to make the androgyne symbol - even if no-one else wanted it.


Here is my ag sun embedded in a word

[Nero]

A real AG symbol would incorporate moon and sun. 

[RebeccaFog]

I still have sun pins everywhere.

Which is better, to incorporate sun & moon, or Earth and Moon?

[Nero]

I still have sun pins everywhere.

Which is better, to incorporate sun & moon, or Earth and Moon?

Well the moon's always been strongly associated with the feminine (cyclical) and the sun with the masculine (constant), so sun & moon.