The least confusing option would be to adopt new words and add male or female suffixes as necessary rather than trying to "neutralise" words that have long been used as male.

For Example:.............Neutral...........Male.............Female

English.....................Person............Man..............Woman
Traditional Esperanto.....-................Viro..............Virino
New Word.................Ulo.................Uliĉo.............Ulino

Ulo has been used as a prefix meaning person so using it as a standalone word meaning person should be easily understandable.

English ....................Parent............Father............Mother
Traditional Esperanto......-...............Patro.............Patrino
New Word.................Genitoro........Genotoriĉo.....Genitorino

English ....................Spouse............Husband.........Wife
Traditional Esperanto.....-.................Edzo...............Edzino
New Word.................Spozo.............Spoziĉo...........Spozino

There have been workarounds introduced using the ge prefix, but that introduces more unnecessary complication by using a plural prefix in the singular.

ASCarroll:

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.

I think it really is a problem, for many words, that they give too many associations. As a reader you need to make a careful analysis to find out and be sure what is the meaning. Compared to the time it takes to learn the basic grammar (for many persons a question of hours) and the basic vocabulary (weeks), it takes a disproportionately long time until you cease to stumble on some compound words.
Even if you already know tens of thousands of morphemes, it will still happen that you meet a word which you will not see where to cut, or, if you are happy, you will see it only after some seconds of consideration.
The mere fact that the words starting by "in-" are so numerous is enough to make the morpheme "in-" a bit problematic. You get it wrong from the beginning. If the use of "in-" would be made more extensive, the problem would increase.
I personally like the word "ino" and would in fact prefer getting rid of some of the other in-words, those with no feminine meaning, but that is not easily done. So I expressed my warning about this particular consequence. This one is not a serous one, not one about the grammatical structure of the language, but still one worth concidering.

Well, the thing actually is not open to debate (even if the debate never ends) because Esperanto only is useful and only makes sense if everybody learn and speak the same grammar. And because there is no real problem in the grammar, all evolution needed must happen (as is happening since the beginning) in vocabulary not related in the way the grammar works.

“Everyone” has his own reform based in own likings (not in real needs), but what matters is to have one language, not a free world of dialects. To do that, we don't need any constructed language, we just can choose any language of the world or stay under the domain of english.

So the thing of respect the Fundamento it's not related to tradition (as reformists like to tell), it's just a question of functionality, because that is the only way, in this moment, to have an usable language. So any argument out of this context is a waste of time.

And beginners of course have the right to ask questions, but they just must learn the language as it is, without thinking “ok, maybe this I can do it wildly in my way ” as they would do learning any other language.

Ĝis, Novatago.

ASCarroll, there currently isn't a way to delete your own previous posts. If you use the "report" button on them, you can report them and an administrator can delete them (or else use the "edit" button and sub your text with "please delete", but your request might not be caught so soon).

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As a lernu tutor, when I had beginners who asked me about -icx- or gender issues (sample comment: "Doesn't 'virino' basically mean female man?" ), my standard explanation was that the "male default" could be considered to be a mild irregularity in Esperanto, but it deals with relatively few words, which almost all involve family relationships (onklo/onklino), and the -in- ending put on those words should be considered a female equivalent of that male person. I would explain that modern Esperanto generally treats words other than these as having neutral gender, so that "kanadano" would be a male or a female Canadian (to be distinguished by virkanadano or kanadanino if we really care to specify). Furthermore, I would explain, speakers of some highly gendered languages are inclined to stick an -in- suffix on anything at all that is female, but this should be seen more as an influence of their native than a trait required in Esperanto, because they are seldom so careful to add ge- every single time they are referring to both genders. For example, such a person might diligently say "kanadanino" every single time they refer to a Canadian woman, but still say things like "kanadanoj estas bonaj" (Canadians are good), intending to mean all Canadians and not just men. I consider this a holdover from languages that use the masculine plural as the default for describing a mixed group. Esperanto is not one of those languages, so obviously "patroj" means only "fathers" and not "parents". I would tell beginners that some people consider people words to be masculine by default, but that the beginner should feel free to consider people words neutral, and that they can choose whate they prefer, but they should be aware of the issue and recognize it either way.

Furthermore, I would tell them, once you have spoken the language for a long time, "virino" ceases to parse in your brain as "female man", and simply becomes "woman", so that the roots in your brain are more like vir/o and virin/o, rather than vir/in/o. You cease to care so much about individual words.

Long-time forum readers know that -icx- has been discussed here many times. I think this provokes the strongly negative reaction. A beginner raises a question that is brand-new to the beginner. Long-time members are sick of answering the same exact question yet again, and they get snippy in the responses. If you ask a question people haven't heard before, even involving a language reform, the reaction is likely to be less negative. "Oh, you would like to add a new pronoun 'gra', to indicate only inanimate red-colored objects? Sorry, but the chances of the Esperanto community accepting that are very small. Language change happens in Esperanto like in other languages; we don't write changes to the language and make everyone start speaking the new way. Change happens and words get added when someone starts using a new form, and others decide whether to imitate it or ignore it. If your reform is important to you, we recommend that you start using your new pronoun and see if it catches on. Good luck!"

Also, requests on "Is there an alternative way to say 'x'?" are usually taken politely; the assumption is that they're trying to find an alternate wording in 'traditional' Esperanto, rather than to radically redefine existing words. Reform proposals that redefine existing words don't go over too well. No one wants to check the date on what they're reading to understand the meaning of the words, especially basic words like father versus "parent", and no one wants to learn an old and a new version of the language, just so they can read both old and new texts.

Many Esperanto beginners have their own ideas about how to improve the language, and dabble in some of these reforms. My normal advice is to learn the language as it is first, and get comfortable with it, and then decide if your proposed reform is really necessary, because your perspective changes as you learn. I see flaws in Esperanto today, and if I wrote the language I'd do some things differently. These flaws aren't the same things I saw as flaws as a beginner. You see the structure differently when you are actively using the language. I usually caution the reform-minded that there is only the smallest likelihood that their proposed change will catch on; just because Esperanto is a language created by a person doesn't mean that it's easier to reform it than it is to reform French or Spanish. People tend to treat Esperanto as a work in progress rather than a living language, and by spending time in the community before proposing changes, it helps you to see it as a living language rather than a project to be edited.

As a final aside, I have never seen gender (or, for that matter, political viewpoint) correlated in any way with support or non-support of a particular linguistic reform. There are many reasons why people may support icx, for other reasons others have mentioned here (linguistic symmetry is a big one), but I haven't personally seen that the big Esperantist feminists have put their support behind this one. If you are looking for a reason to be for or against it, I'd strike feminism from your list. I've never heard of an Esperanto feminist organization supporting linguistic change, but I have heard of the opposite (that is, ruling out linguistic change as a method of achieving feminist goals, and expressly declining to take a position on language reform proposals).

And in response to the original question - yeah, you could say "ino" instead of "virino". But the semantic division has already happened so you'd be giving people a slightly strange impression if you did that. Go ahead and do it if you want. It's been almost 20 years since I started with Esperanto, and this is my personal understanding if people used certain words (to repeat - do what you want, but to help you out, I'm telling you how I would hear it if someone used these words with me, so you have full information before making your choices).

virino - woman
ulino* - gal (sounds informal - I hear "ulo" as something like "guy", an informal word)
ino - female (could be a person or a dog or a horse, a female living being. This would sound clinical to me, to use it on a person, like a police report "Two males and three females were observed entering the house" )

* I said that "ulino" sounded informal. The formal equivalent for me would be "sinjorino", a word I would use as an extra respectful way to refer to someone when talking about them in the third person in front of their face, female equivalent of "sinjoro", as we would use "sir" or "ma'am" in the second person. I would say this if I were working at a counter and I needed to ask something on behalf of a client. An example, "We have a lady/gentleman here asking about pricing on our new widget; do you have that information for me?". It doesn't sound that great in US English, somehow "This lady wants to know x" sounds rude in a way that "This gentleman wants to know x" doesn't sound rude, but I think you get the point, and obviously in Esperanto, sinjoro and sinjorino are equally polite.

Aŝoko:Mi amas ĉi tion solvon! Kaj ĝi estas laŭfundamenta uzo de iĉisma reformo

That is just another way to say that anything is ok in Esperanto, just come here and shit on it, all stupid ideas are welcome! And just wait to see die Esperanto.

Ĝis, Novatago.

bryku:And I have a question to you - why do you use "woman" instead of "sheman" which is a way more logical?

Joh.

I'm sort of glad I jumped to the end of the thread as erinja's response covered my question which was:

"Isn't the -o basically neutral unless context makes clear a man or a woman? and for words like spouse (spozo) if you needed to say husband doesn't the language let you combine roots to say virspozo (man-spouse)?"

I'm very new to the language, but I think apart from claims about symmetry, the problem is that if you're trying to be non-specific then you're trying to hide information which is the exact opposite of communication.

gepatroj is 'parents' in an explicitly neutral sense, but i'm not going to think you mean you have two fathers when you say
'mia patroj', I'm probably not going to make the connection even if you say 'mia du patroj' though I will think it's awkward for you to explicitly state you have two parents. As a matter of fact, to make it clear, you'd almost have to say 'mia vir-patroj'.

It would be the same for onkloj I would assume that included aunts unless you said otherwise.

This could just be me, but when dealing with most things the ge-??-oj format seems almost needlessly pedantic.

ASCarroll:And I do try to use the still-gendered words like patro in a sex neutral sense if I can get away with it. Mi havas du gepatrojn. Mia ina patro estas mia patrino. Mia iĉa patro estas mia patriĉo.

Why even bother with "gepatroj" then... "patroj" will work fine.