One Gender Equity Word Too Far

The girls and women of Bogotá have lots of concerns: crime, sexual harassment, employment

The new official Bogotá uniform?

discrimination, and others. But I've never heard a Bogotana say she suffered from oppression by grammatical discrimination.

But this is what Bogotá's legal system, in all of its wisdom and blindness, is now charging ahead with.

A judge just ordered Mayor Peñalosa to modify his city slogan from 'Bogotá Mejor Para Todos' to 'Bogotá Mejor Para Todos y Todas.' In other words, he's to add the words 'y todas' so that nobody gets the idea that the city's goal is to make life better only for its male residents.

Aventureros hostal: Only male adventurers allowed here?

Sensibly, Peñalosa is appealing the decision, which would require the modification of innumerable city signs, uniforms, websites and literature, not to mention making the city's slogan sound wordy and awkward. The slogan was changed when Peñalosa became mayor a year ago, and will be changed again if the current recall effort against Peñalosa succeeds.

In protesting the ruling, Peñalosa pointed out that 'every high school teacher knows that in Spanish the masculine words include both male and female individuals'. That's why when schools refer to their 'alumnos' nobody thinks they mean boys but not girls. And when presidents refer to 'ciudadanos' they mean both male and female citizens. 'Abogados' includes lawyers of both genders. And so on.

Welcome to La Candelaria: But only for males,
unless your an Engish-speaker.

Specify the female gender in everything and you not only state the obvious and treat your audience ciudadanos y ciudadanas' and 'candidatos y candidatas' and 'senadoras y senadores.' I'll never forget a mind-numbing talk I suffered thru one evening in Bolivia as the speaker went on about 'campesinos y campesinas,' 'maestros y maestras' and 'profesoras y profesores.' Perhaps he also specified that the people owned both 'perros y perras.'
like idiots, but you generate documents like Venezuela's Constitution or Colombia's peace agreement with the FARC, which drone on repetitively about '

If not for the time and effort wasted by this habit isn't enough to ban it, the trees needlessly killed and the gigabytes of computer memory needlessly filled should do it.

'A better Bogotá for all' - but only if you're a male?

But if always specifying the female gender really is required, then Bogotá is in big trouble:

The Down Town converntion center says its closer to male Bogotanos.

The Procudaria warns males not to be corrupt.

Unquestionably, Spanish is sexist - as are most languages. But Bogotá won't change it, and will make a fool of itself. A more practical solution would be to convince the ultra-conservative Real Academia de la Lengua in Madrid to accept use of the @ symbol to include both genders, as in 'Hola chic@s'.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Did he not really not mean that?

Mr. President, tell us it isn't not so! Does he really want to eliminate Colombians' rights?

One thing which has bothered me since moving to Colombia is the grammatical construction by which people say one thing while meaning the opposite.

I guess I supposed that I might just be imagining things - until I spotted this quote by Pres. Santos in today's El Tiempo, about protecting Colombians' rights in the wake of the controversial ruling by the International Court of Justice slashing Colombia's maritime territory in the Caribbean.

Did he really say this? Evidently, yes.

Did he really mean it? No. He meant exactly the opposite:

But this grammatical construction, for some historical reason, has become so internalized in Colombia that even educated people accept it for what it's supposed to mean, not what it does.

It's far from the Spanish language's only logical failing. Take the whole double negative thing, which in English would mean a positive - such as: 'No hay nadie en la casa,' which translated literally gives us 'There isn't nobody in the house,' meaning that there is somebody.

But that double negative has become officialized, institutionalized and sanctified in high school grammar texts. I'm just hoping that this 'Hasta no..,' construction never does.

English, of course, has its own grammatically nonsensical phrases, including 'I could care less.' People use it to mean they don't care, and should say what they really mean: 'I couldn't care less.'

Meanwhile, the dispute with Nicaragua just gets worse and worse. Colombia's withdrawal from the Pacto de Bogotá leaves the two nations with no common agreed arbitrator. Nicaragua will continue claiming the sea territory the court awarded it. And, as long as Colombia rejects the new sea boundaries, Nicaragua will undoubtedly continue claiming the San Andres Islands and keys, as it has for decades.

Those are the ingredients for an ugly international dispute, which has the potential to turn violent, and will surely cost Colombia international stature.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours