AllenHartwell, you shouldn't bother posting in a thread that you think should have been closed.

OldScratch, how many Esperanto events have you been to? I think you'd be surprised at the number of people there who aren't likely to have heard of -iĉ-, particularly in the older generation of people who learned Esperanto a long time ago and aren't active on the internet. That community is much less likely to have heard of these recent additions or to understand them.

I've heard of -iĉ- and I think if someone threw it into their speech, I'd be thrown off. I'd wonder for a second if it's a root I haven't heard of before I would parse it out and realize that it's some monstrosity with -iĉ-. I really don't hear it around at all.

I think my main point still stands. Each Esperantist must first ask himself who is more authoritative: Zamenhof and the community, or one new speaker who probably doesn't even yet have an attachment to the community? Do they respect Zamenhof's work and wish to participate in the experiment he started, or do they want to destroy it and remake it in their own image, the rest of the community and over a century of usage be damned? If it's the former, then they should be welcomed aboard. If the latter, then defensive measures must be taken.

I think this is the ultimate underlying root of reformism in general. It's the common thread between each of the reform efforts: a fundamental arrogance - a total lack of respect for what really exists, the man who created it, and everyone who's ever bothered to use it. That sort shouldn't even bother engaging in Esperanto really. It'd be better for everyone if they left, like the OP or the countless other trolls. Even Couterat had the sense to strike out on his own.

erinja:OldScratch, how many Esperanto events have you been to? I think you'd be surprised at the number of people there who aren't likely to have heard of -iĉ-, particularly in the older generation of people who learned Esperanto a long time ago and aren't active on the internet. That community is much less likely to have heard of these recent additions or to understand them.

I've heard of -iĉ- and I think if someone threw it into their speech, I'd be thrown off. I'd wonder for a second if it's a root I haven't heard of before I would parse it out and realize that it's some monstrosity with -iĉ-. I really don't hear it around at all.

I'm afraid that I haven't been to any events, so I lack the experience of speaking to long-time Esperantists who don't communicate with the medium of the internet, thus you may be entirely right.

But I would still hold onto my claim that it's an easy concept/suffix to learn. It's the proposed male equivalent to "-in-" that could be useful for distinguishing definitely masculine things. As more and more words inevitably become neutral, I feel like it too grows in its handiness. And if it's a foreign concept to the internet-less members of Esperantujo, then perhaps it would suit advocates to attend more (or more significant) events and interchange the ideas. If they find it useless, they won't see fit to use it, but as with any neologism there's (varying levels of) reasoning behind it, so it's up to the given individual to value and either adopt or neglect it.
I'm for maintaining a significant level of stability in Esperanto, but if there are simple and easy (in my subjective view) implementations that could be introduced, I don't see why not allow them. I say this with little knowledge of affairs, but perhaps we as a worldwide movement need a more coherent (I hesitate to say "competent" as that brings negative connotations) means of discussing ideas throughout, well, the world to prevent divisions or spawn another relative-rival like Ido. I feel a balance of preserving the language and discussing what could be done to carefully improve it would be perfectly fair. Not that there's assurance that any significant change would necessarily happen.

But again, I've never attended an even in person (nor will I until perhaps August), so I concede that I don't have a complete understanding yet. Thanks for the insight.

AllenHartwell, I don't quite understand why you can only seem to think in extremes. Perhaps it's the sort of media you consume in your daily life, but I hardly think that discussing or even officially introducing a few neologisms would utterly "destroy" the beauty of Zamenhof's work. There would be many significant other causes before that would be the case. Might I even argue that in the face of a rational and harmless introduction, steadfast lingual conservatism would equally work towards creating this supposed demise of the language?

OldScratch:But I would still hold onto my claim that it's an easy concept/suffix to learn. It's the proposed male equivalent to "-in-" that could be useful for distinguishing definitely masculine things. As more and more words inevitably become neutral, I feel like it too grows in its handiness.

OldScratch:AllenHartwell, I don't quite understand why you can only seem to think in extremes. Perhaps it's the sort of media you consume in your daily life, but I hardly think that discussing or even officially introducing a few neologisms would utterly "destroy" the beauty of Zamenhof's work. There would be many significant other causes before that would be the case. Might I even argue that in the face of a rational and harmless introduction, steadfast lingual conservatism would equally work towards creating this supposed demise of the language?

I'll reply to both of these together. There is a claim that Esperanto has no grammatical gender. Reading the foundational documents, this proves not to be the case. Esperanto simply has natural gender. All words that don't relate to people or animals are neuter. All words for animals and most words for people are masculine by default, and add -in- to form the feminine and ge-...-j to refer to a mixed gender group. An epicene can be created by -ul or ge- by itself. Because of this, a bovo is not a generic cow but a bull. A kato is not any old cat but specifically a tomcat. It's the same for people. Except for a handful of words relating specifically to women, a word for a person is masculine by default. Your patro is not your parent but your father. People reinforce the claim otherwise by habitually misusing these words as unmarked neuter. What's next? Will your paĉjo become your paĉjiĉo? Will you become a viriĉo? Or how about we just stop using viro entirely like the OP apparently did and just start calling women iĉinoj?

It's bad enough that we have to use vir- to clarify what should be obvious due to this. This "harmless" -iĉ proposal would simply further the degradation and become a competing and confusing equivalent to vir- and maskla. The forms we already have are what are present in the literature. They're what people know and use. Why should we create a New Esperanto and an Old Esperanto if we don't have to? Why should we deem a book written Before Neologism as riddled with errors that weren't, or the Esperanto an experienced Esperantist has spoken, written, thought, and sung in for decades (and possibly since birth) to be wrong and a new and poorly thought through Esperanto the correct version?

Also, I'd disagree that conservatism towards the language is what kills it. What kills a language is a lack of speakers and stability. The nature of Esperanto is such that stability is attractive to prospective speakers, while lack of stability is what repels them and even knowledgeable speakers. Esperanto could remain exactly as it is now for a hundred years and remain alive and well as long as people still spoke, wrote, and loved in it. As long as it remained the language of congresses and households. But if it were in constant flux for a hundred years, and especially in such basic points as how to derive the masculine and feminine meanings of a word, then it's doubtful many people would even bother staying with it at all. It probably wouldn't totally die, but I could easily see it fracturing into many competing moribund dialects.

AllenHartwell, you still get it wrong, although I appreciate your defending of the Fundamento.

Gender is not sex, so there is no gender in Esperanto.

Most nouns expressing people or animals don't indicate the sex: persono, najbaro, amiko, kato ("cat", not "tomcat" ), ĉevalo and all suffixoids indicating persons (-ul-, -ist- etc.). The female form is formed with -in-, the male with vir- (animals) or (usually) without an explict marker (inclusive use with persons).

Nouns expressing kinship, (noble) titles and some animals are male: patro, frato, reĝo, sinjoro, bovo, koko, kapro. The female form is formed with the same -in-, the neutral in the plural with ge-, while there is no neutral singular. There is no "epicene use" of -ul- with these words.
In fact the modern language use has neutralized all male animals, leading to the use of virbovo etc., but this is kontraŭfundamenta, at least a tolerdeklaro of the Academy is necessary.

Some words are lexically female: damo, nimfo, matrono. There is no male or neutral derivation for them.

That's it. Taking into account also the personal pronouns, we see a mess of a system, so it is not a miracle that there are reform proposals, and above I wrote which one could still be conform with the Fundamento.
But none of these is likely to catch on, and none of these will repair all inconveniences caused by the asymmetric and opaque assignemt of sex, this is a case we should notice and make the necessary changes at the time of the Fina Venko, when the Fundamento will be tuŝebla.

erinja:I think you'd be surprised at the number of people there who aren't likely to have heard of -iĉ-, particularly in the older generation of people who learned Esperanto a long time ago and aren't active on the internet.

If we discouraged every new word and usage that the “older generation” hasn’t heard of, then even attaching viro to a word to make it masculine would be an unnecessary contrivance, since every word and every suffix would be masculine unless otherwise specified. There would be no friends, for example, only he-friends and she-friends, nor even Esperantists, but he-Esperantists and she-Esperantists. Nothing new would ever catch on, because nothing unfamiliar to the horse-and-buggy set would be allowed to.

AllenHartwell:Each Esperantist must first ask himself who is more authoritative: Zamenhof and the community, or one new speaker who probably doesn't even yet have an attachment to the community?

There is no “Zamenhof and the community”; even when he was alive, he ceded all control of the language to its speakers, and the speakers are not a monolithic group.

AllenHartwell:What's next? Will your paĉjo become your paĉjiĉo? Will you become a viriĉo?

The iĉ thing has been explained so many times that I can only assume that you’re trolling at this point. But here’s a summary of iĉ for the kids following at home.

AllenHartwell:An epicene can be created by -ul

If you ever get around to learning the language from an actual lernolibro, you’ll discover that ul means “a person or thing characterized by”, which is why saĝulo means “a wise person” and not “wisdom, either male or female”, mamulo means “a mammal”, not “a breast, either male or female”, virulo means “a manly man”, not “an adult human, either male or female”, and azenulo means “a jackass, fool”, not “a donkey, either male or female”. What you’ve been espousing is an Esperantido called Novataguese.

AllenHartwell:We don't need yet another highly obscure synonym just to replace perfectly good Fundamenta roots.

An admitted beginner who thinks piĉo is a canon word with which iĉ would conflict, and who thinks ul is the neuter equivalent of in should probably lecture less on what is fundamenta and what is not.

AllenHartwell:A kato is not any old cat but specifically a tomcat

Check your dictionary. You’ll be surprised by what you can learn there.

AllenHartwell:Except for a handful of words relating specifically to women, a word for a person is masculine by default.

Again, check your dictionary. Your claim hasn’t been true since women entered the workforce and female professionals became commonplace.

AllenHartwell:This -icx would simply further the degradation and become a competing and confusing equivalent to vir- and maskla.

Actually, the confusion comes from the use of viro, which already means “man, adult male human”, as a prefix to mean simply “male”. Words suffixed with in are unambiguously female; words prefixed with viro often have several possible meanings.

AllenHartwell:All words for animals and most words for people are masculine by default.

The Plena manlibro de Esperanta gramatiko, which generally describes Esperanto's grammar quite clearly as it is actually used, directly contradicts this claim. (Edit: And so do the three people who managed to reply before I finished typing, apparently.) It states that words, in meaning, can be gender-neutral (as most words), inherently masculine, or inherently feminine, but to the first of these groups (neutral roots) it specifically lists, among others, hundo, bovo, kato, homo, besto, and birdo, not to mention people like amiko and ĉefo which were, if I'm not mistaken, previously understood to be inherently masculine.

I'm not trying to defile Esperanto or disrespect Zamenhof by using kato to mean "cat" without specifying the gender. I use it that way because, in my experience, it is usually understood that way. I could use it to mean "male cat"; for example if I said la katoj kaj katinoj it's clear enough in this case that I don't mean "all the cats, and also the girl cats". But if I see a cat and say "Jen kato!" and later find out it was female, I wasn't wrong, nor would I have even likely "corrected" myself. Esperanto is not defined by the Fundamento. That is its seed. Esperanto today exists through and by virtue of its speakers. If a large majority ever did adopt -iĉ, for better or worse, that would be Esperanto. Not "new Esperanto" any more than you're "new Allen" for having cells in your body that you didn't have last week. And it doesn't mean we're going to start calling patro neutral. Nobody naturally uses patro to mean anything but "male parent" and I doubt they ever will. That doesn't mean we have to force all words for living things to follow suit. The gender of the noun is semantic, not grammatical.

For me, the reasons I don't use -iĉ are simple and have nothing to do with how I feel the language "should" be -- rather, I don't hear it enough (or ever, that I can recall) for it to sound natural to me, and I don't feel a need for it. I'm quite fine with virkato to mean tomcat, because, honestly, how often do I really need to specify the sex of a cat, and that I can't just say "Kio? Oh, ne, li estas vira." When a speaking community shares a need for a new way to say something, languages introduce new elements. Otherwise, they generally don't. Esperanto is sui generis, no doubt, but it's still a living language and still changes (or doesn't) like one.

morfran:There is no “Zamenhof and the community”; even when he was alive, he ceded all control of the language to its speakers, and the speakers are not a monolithic group.

There is how he designed the language and the vast majority of speakers have spoken ever since.

morfran:The iĉ thing has been explained so many times that I can only assume that you’re trolling at this point. But here’s a summary of iĉ for the kids following at home.

So it's your proposal that we adopt this new suffixoid and add a new root for every current root it doesn't work with? Instead of simply keeping the system we already have and know works well? Why? I concede that it doesn't always work perfectly, but suitable and stable for no additional work is preferable to "better" (subjectively) yet chaotic with the additional work of learning at least two words for every idea, which neologisms to use with which words, and which words are deprecated. There's also the issue that there isn't just one proposed synonym for each "problematic" word. I've seen genitoro, ĝenitoro, and parento on various crackpot reform proposals. If you're really, truly intent on making up a new weird word for the concept, then why not just go with malidulo or something? You could replace filo with idulo. And while we're on the subject of made up words, you could totally replace onklo with avunculuso. Why not?

morfran:An admitted beginner who thinks piĉo is a canon word with which iĉ would conflict, and who thinks ul is the neuter equivalent of in should probably lecture less on what is fundamenta and what is not.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that being in use and widely understood since first being introduced by Kalocsay is enough to make it canonical, even if it isn't Fundamenta. I don't think Zamenhof would have even used such language anyway.

morfran:Again, check your dictionary. Your claim hasn’t been true since women entered the workforce and female professionals became commonplace.

I addressed that:

AllenHartwell:People reinforce the claim otherwise by habitually misusing these words as unmarked neuter.

morfran:Actually, the confusion comes from the use of viro, which already means “man, adult male human”, as a prefix to mean simply “male”. Words suffixed with in are unambiguously female; words prefixed with viro often have several possible meanings.

Then we could just as easily use maskl- instead. We already have alternatives.