"I prefer modern silverware."
Translation:Mi preferas modernan manĝilaron.
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American here, we do indeed use "silverware" as a generic term for eating utensils, even though they're typically made from stainless steel. I've even heard people use the term "plastic silverware" when talking about the disposable stuff.
Edit: I think my favorite term for cutlery is "eatin' irons".
I believe that some US English speakers call it "silverware", some call it "flatware" and many simply lack a vocabulary word that encompasses knives, spoons, forks, etc.
(For example, there's a story told in my family about how one of my cousins there, in grade school, talked about "helping her parents by putting away the Besteck" -- they used the German word in their family because there was no good English one available to them but the child did not realise that that word was not English.)
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"Mangxilaron" = "silverware" only in the USA. I have never heard it call silverware in Australia, only cutlery, and one of my Esperanto dictionarys has it defined as "eating utensils". That is probably a better universal translation.
Sounds like an etymological fallacy. (You don't say "it's now six o'smartphone" if you read the time off your phone rather than off a clock, do you? And do you still say "hang up" when pressing the red key on your phone, even though you're not hanging a physical receiver on a cradle?)
Dictionaries say that silverware can now also mean "articles, especially eating and serving utensils, made of silver, silver-plated metals, stainless steel, etc." ( http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/silverware ) or "forks, knives, and spoons that are made of stainless steel, plastic, etc." ( http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/silverware )
That boat has sailed; the word now no longer necessarily refers to silver.
As you will see by reading the other comments, some English speakers use "silverware" to refer to eating utensils such as forks, knives, and spoons, regardless of which material they are made of. Other English speakers use different words or may not even have a collective word for those tools together.