• Squids@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    English should absolutely do this you’d end up with some really cool words. Also because Jodorowsky was absolutely right - emperoratrix is a fucking kickass title

    • zagaberoo@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Emperoratrix sounds really clunky to me, -atrix is the feminine counterpart to -ator. Imperator, dominator, navigator, etc. I’m particularly fond of the overextension that is ‘alligatrix’ myself.

      • Squids@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Fine fine, then Emperoress instead. It’s what the actual English translation of The Incal uses

        • zagaberoo@beehaw.org
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Why not ‘Empress’, I wonder? Nothing actually wrong with any of the options, just rings strangely to my ears.

          • Squids@sopuli.xyz
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            Because the entire point was that the character in question is genderless and this was the early 80s and also French so more modern gender neutral terms didn’t exist yet, and “let’s just smash the two gendered endings together” was his attempt at one (I’m guessing emperoratrix comes from a literal translation from French, where a female emperor is an imperatrice, and -trice is -trix in english, so imperatorice -> emperoratrix) The book also uses s/he as a pronoun instead of they.

            I mean hey, it’s much more gender neutral than just defaulting to the masculine like say Le Guin did in left hand of darkness