ASCarroll:...I probably will adopt it in my personal vortaro and speech though, along with dropping the seemingly redundant words (homo, virino, viro) in favor of using the suffixes already present and this -iĉ- one. It just makes more sense to me and seems just as clear to any speaker.

I do suggest you to pick a good handbook and learn Esperanto well from it, then use the language for a couple of years, read good novels, speak with experienced esperantists, attend esperanto congresses... You will see that all those "changes" are quite useless and should find their way into a trashcan, right where they belong (same as proposals of changing English words, grammar or wired spelling).

Otherwise you and I will be speaking different language.

Amike Grzesiek

I've been using http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/eaccess/eaccess... mostly. He seems to have been a well respected scholar in the community, and his notes definitely clear a lot of things up. The last manlibro I found was a fairly outdated Teach Yourself Esperanto or some such with a green star on a yellow background maybe about six years ago. I'm not interested in any crazy radical Ido II or anything. Basically I just see Esperanto as a living language, the Fundamento as honestly more like guidelines from the creator who relinquished the project to the world as a whole (especially as opposed to seeing it as the Eternal Sacred Law of God or something), and decided that the words Zamenhofian homo and virino are superfluous when we already have the equally Zamenhofian ulo and ino. I'm definitely still learning though, especially with this being like the fourth time I attempted it. And I'm in no way saying anything like, say, Couturat. The language - how its users choose to use it - can't be changed by fiat any more than it can be kept exactly the same as it was in 1887.

ASCarroll:So it seems that ino would work just as well, and wouldn't be potentially sexist/confusing like "female man" would.

Assume that we would start using "ino" as an independent word more often than now, that is even in cases where we now say "virino". Such a change would bring with it a small problem when it comes to compound words. There are already many words beginning with in-, like investi. You would then get some new troublesome or confusing homonymes or almost-homonymes. If you hear the words: investi - investo - invetsado - investaĵo. Can you always and immediately be sure what one is speaking about, women's dresses or investments?

Ino means female, and malino means male. Viro means man and virino means woman. Homo means human so none of these words are redundant nor confusing. They all define a different thing.

The iĉ propose is based on the assumption that Esperanto is somehow against women, basically because some crazy feminists find "oppression" everywhere they look. But this is not the case, Esperanto words are generally neutral, all the -o are neutral.

There are only few cases when the -o means male, for example patro, avo, kuzo and so on. This does not mean that it is against women, because there are words where the -o means female and female only, for example: damo, furio, matrono, muzo, subreto, madono etc.

So what should we say now? That Esperanto oppressed men because there is not the male version of these words? Or that Esperanto is feminist because the male version of these words depends on the feminine one? How do we say "male" in Esperanto? We say mal-ino, the opposite of a female, so should we male get upset because our definition depends on the ones of females?

The whole iĉ propose is a non-sequitur, for there is no such a problem about gender in Esperanto. All the words are neutral apart some few exceptions and these exceptions are necessary, and they are so few that it would be absurd to change the entire vocabulary only to fix these 10 or so words.

If you would know Esperanto enough you'd understand that the suffix in removes the male gender of the word root to make it only female, so woman = virino.

But that's when you know Esperanto enough, so give it time. Don't just say “here or there I don't find explanations for my questions so I'm doing things by my own”.

Read: http://bertilow.com/pmeg/vortfarado/afiksoj/sufiks...

And notice this part: IN ne ŝanĝas la bazan signifon de la vorto, sed nur aldonas in-seksan signifon (kaj forprenas eventualan virseksan signifon).

Translated: IN doesn't change the basic meaning of a word, but it just adds female meaning (and removes contingent male meaning).

So it is a powerful female suffix, isn't it?

That's all you need to know for this case.

Ĝis, Novatago.

Rugxdoma:

ASCarroll:So it seems that ino would work just as well, and wouldn't be potentially sexist/confusing like "female man" would.

Assume that we would start using "ino" as an independent word more often than now, that is even in cases where we now say "virino". Such a change would bring with it a small problem when it comes to compound words. There are already many words beginning with in-, like investi. You would then get some new troublesome or confusing homonymes or almost-homonymes. If you hear the words: investi - investo - invetsado - investaĵo. Can you always and immediately be sure what one is speaking about, women's dresses or investments?

I'm sure context would make it clear which one was meant, just as context would make clear whether one were talking about poppies or the Pope's grandfathers.....

efilzeo:.

There are only few cases when the -o means male, for example patro, avo, kuzo and so on. This does not mean that it is against women, because there are words where the -o means female and female only, for example: damo, furio, matrono, muzo, subreto, madono etc.

Not exactly....it's the ROOT that denotes the fe/maleness, not the -o. "-O" simply means "this is a noun"

orthohawk:I'm sure context would make it clear which one was meant, just as context would make clear whether one were talking about poppies or the Pope's grandfathers.....

Por spertaj esperantistoj cxio estas klara, sed plejmultaj esperantistoj ne estas spertuloj, do ecx etaj samsonajxoj aux kvazaux-samsonajxoj* povas esti iom gxenaj.
For skilled esperantists everything is clear, but most esperantist are not so skillful, so even minor cases of homonymism or almost-homonymism will be somewhat harmful.
(* Edited/Redaktita)

"bryku":Thank you. And exactly the same is with the word "virino".

Actually, it’s not the same thing at all; one word is redundant, the other seemingly self-contradictory. (Virino, despite Novatago’s “powerful female suffix” explanation, still doesn’t have the face-value logic of, say, homino or a neologism like muliero.)

Long-time Esperantists obviously have made their peace with virino, etc.; new Esperantists are understandably puzzled. Hardly warrants everyone ripping into a new Esperantist asking the reason for it.

Some of the disproportionate vitriol in this thread seems rooted in contempt for what’s seen as faddish political correctness, but sexual egalitarianism isn’t the only reason -iĉ- keeps coming up.

Sometimes it’s Esperanto’s existing symmetry: the apparent inverse relationship between -nj- and -in- in itself suggests a suffix -iĉ- to correspond to -ĉj-. One hardly needs to be Gloria Steinem to see that.

Sometimes it’s the inconvenient lack of symmetry: with ge-, for example, one can easily refer to spouses, parents, and siblings, but a new Esperantist sees no convenient word for a spouse, a parent, or a sibling; one must pick a gender. A masculine suffix, it’s argued, combined with the addition of some gender-neutral words for parent, spouse, etc., could remedy that without changing the meaning of existing masculine words.

I myself am not arguing for or against it; I’m just telling you what I’ve read, and that it’s not all about sexism. Not that the reason should matter. Either one finds the proposal useful or one doesn’t. (I once read in Being Colloquial in Esperanto that Esperantists in San Diego use novali as slang for “to space/zone out”. Not really PIV, but I never felt the need to accuse San Diegan Esperantists of noobish arrogance for it.)

In any case, all this fuss is just over an additional neologism that doesn’t change any preexisting vocabulary. Maybe a handful of neologisms. In another recent thread, people are offering proposals for a better word for “dating” than rendevuado. No one seems to be having a cow about it. Whether or not the participants in that thread reach a consensus, I’m sure the language will survive just fine.

Rugxdoma:Assume that we would start using "ino" as an independent word more often than now, that is even in cases where we now say "virino". Such a change would bring with it a small problem when it comes to compound words. There are already many words beginning with in-, like investi. You would then get some new troublesome or confusing homonymes or almost-homonymes. If you hear the words: investi - investo - invetsado - investaĵo. Can you always and immediately be sure what one is speaking about, women's dresses or investments?

That's not a problem with other words. Anĝelo doesn't break out to anĝ-el-o just because it has "el" in it. Aĉeti doesn't mean "to be a terrible little thing" because the root is aĉet-, not aĉ- alone. The root for investi is invest-, not in-. It may take some getting used to, but it doesn't take too long to realize you should start looking at morphemes rather than syllables.