Horse terminology · 4:12pm Dec 13th, 2013
I can't believe I actually have to tell fans of a show about ponies this. I hate horses and I know this stuff.
There is a one-for-one mapping between terms for horses/ponies by gender and age, and terms for humans:
Mare = Woman
Filly = Girl (NOT Child)
Stallion = Man
Colt = Boy (NOT Man)
Foal = Child
In the world of MLP, you can use the term "pony" to substitute for "human" or "person". I find the use of it to replace "person" deeply unfortunate because a world where there are multiple sentient races needs a non-species-specific term for "sentient being", and I always felt that "person" fills that role in human language; our species is human, but if we were to meet sentient aliens, they would be people just like us, because "person" doesn't mean human, it means "sentient being" and it's only because we're the only ones we know about that it's not redundant. Also, terms like "somepony" are kind of racist when you consider beings like Spike, Zecora and Gilda being around. But, well, I guess ponies are canonically racist, because that's the way they do it.
But what I keep seeing in fanfics is people confusing the term filly for foal (here's a hint: Shining Armor and Big Macintosh were never fillies), and colt for stallion. If you are not actually talking about a male foal, then you need to be in a context where we would use boy. So a night out with the colts, Colt Scouts, bad colts are sexy, there's a good colt, he's my coltfriend... but if the context would make it weird to use the term boy instead of man, use stallion, not colt. Unless you're trying to pull some reverse gender politics thing where matriarchal ponies use "colt" to refer to stallions the way patriarchal humans use "girl" to refer to women, but honestly I do not see evidence of that level of sexism in the ponyverse. Males appear to be rarer than females but not disrespected.
I personally use both "someone" and "somepony" depending on the context, mostly because I write Discord a lot and he is not a pony and well aware of that fact. I use "somepony" as a replacement for "somebody" but keep "someone" for contexts where maybe who you're talking about isn't a pony, or the being talking isn't a pony.
I agree utterly, particularly about getting things right, although even the show has flubbed a few times. It really annoyed me when they finally did the wedding scene and used 'mare and colt' for wife and husband... ugh. That's not even accurate if you're trying to say "man and wife" or "woman and man"! I accept gentlecolt, because it flows better, but using fillies in place of ladies was a bad move, because it just muddies the waters of meaning. They haven't used it that way since the first time, I don't think.
Discord has used pony terms before. I can't remember if he ever referred to himself in that respect at any point, and he probably hasn't, since you're right. Even outside the head canon about Q, he knows he isn't a pony, but in the show he's mostly talking to ponies, so he does use their terminology a few times.
I like your suggestion for using someone on non-pony species. I have been pondering that. I suppose 'folks' could replace person maybe.
I could see the ponies apposing "mare" and "colt" for one big reason ...
Equestria is a matriarchy. So they might say this for exactly the same reason why a "businessman" hired a woman to be his "girl Friday." There could be a subtle diminuation of the male status, so that it seems reasonable for them in some circumstances to say the equivalent of "working woman" and "boys on the crew." as apposites.
Equestria clearly isn't some sort of Lyranian (E. E. "Doc" Smith reference) matriarchy out of Hell, where the males are just mindless reproduction machines, but it's definitely a female-dominated society, and on most levels.
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To clarify -- I'm talking about the common parlance in the mid 20th century, when male sexism was probably around as acceptable as female sexism may be in Equestria. Women in America in the 1950's enjoyed perhaps the highest status they ever had in any civilization since the onset of the Bronze Age, but they were still in public affairs not seen as being the full equal as men.
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I don't know. I see what you're saying and I'm fine with that headcanon, but I just don't like the way they do some of the puns which don't make much sense when you translate them back into the original 'human' phrases.
"I now pronounce you mare and colt" translates as "I now pronounce you woman and boy." This is awkward, even if you make it man and girl. It's just not how we say it in English. I think Mare and Husband, or Stallion and Wife, or Husband and Wife makes more sense.
If you want it to be unequal, they still wouldn't use 'boy' in this sense, because for the purposes of marriage, supposedly they're of 'marriage-able age.' Admittedly, I haven't researched all the possible common marriage ceremony terminology that is in English, but that is what makes sense to me (plus 'mare and husband' would still give the potentially unequal air of 'man and wife'.)
They also directly use the word girls at random through-out the series (from the Mane Six themselves), so that doesn't help clarify anything either.
It's even worse for Ladies and Gentlemen. Fillies and Gentlecolts doesn't make a lot of sense, because it turns into Girls and Gentleboys/Gentlemen (I forget which episode this was in but it was one of the prior seasons.) While I understand that Gentlestallion is too many syllables for it to work well, replacing Ladies with Fillies is just... is weird. How is Fillies, unmodified, both 'girls' and 'woman of low noble birth'? It's entirely possible, but it makes things awkward. So is 'mares and gentlecolts' which is what they used in A Canterlot Wedding - Part 2. Women and 'women of low noble birth' are the same thing? We do use 'ladies' now a days for any assortment of women, but there is a historical reason that it's viewed as polite.
I suppose it could be taken as a combination of 'girls and boys' with 'ladies and gentlemen' but it just gets weirder when they use 'mares and gentlecolts'.
Personally, I also dislike the use of 'foal' for 'fool'. It flows well, as subsitutes go, and could suggest 'inexperienced' rather than 'stupid', but it has some potentially bad implications if you really look at it; suggesting that kids are inherently stupid. (Not that I even like kids that much, but while I accept them as inexperienced, stupid is not the same as being improperly taught and requiring further major life lessons.)
I like some of the horse puns they've used, but some of them are questionable IMHO.
It's possible it's just a case of Equestria not being our Earth exactly, but since the correlations are there, and they're replacement puns, it's hard to ignore these connections.