Kirilo81:And people are either male or female, there is no need for a neutral term here at all.

But people and things can be called "it" when their gender isn't known and so on, I thought. Like babies. So, there is a third person-gender. (Also hermaphrodites/intersex people etc). You can also know a baby's name but not know its gender lol (a bit odd, and I know it wasn't exactly something Zamenhof thought about...).

Also, when translating from languages that have no he/she distinction, or that do have a third gender (ex fresh modern German, Swedish and Finnish) it could be difficult at times... so I guess I would then choose to use "ĉjo" and just make a note saying how I was using it non-standardly.

Thanks guys! Too bad there isn't a real one, I was hoping there was and I just didn't know about it.

maybe the simplest solution is domjo, auxtjo, fratjo (without an explicit gender)

"he, joj, ne timu la malhelon, ajoj restas apude"

"la bankisto karesas sian enorman amason de mono, kaj sopirdiras: ho, kara monjo"

"kiun donacon vi preferas el avjoj?"

Cool that Swedish has such a suffix. In reality, in English there is no such thing except for in standing expressions or "baby talk" which is not generally recognized as "standard (American) English. Maybe the people in GB have something similar - donno. In German "chen", "lein", "le", and "li" are used without reference to gender and are usually neutral. BTW, if you are from Sweden, how can you write "in English we...." - Isn't "your" language Swedish?

No, my mother tongue is English, I'm an immigrant living in Sweden lol! Either way, we're writing in English right now regardless of whose mother tongue it is so I felt it fitting to use "we"... Then, living in Sweden and being sufficient at Swedish I felt it okay to represent Sweden enough to say "we" there... Sorry, I guess I am a mess.

Maybe it's just me but doesn't it seem a little weird? "Mother" or "Father" is not a name. It's a noun. A placeholder for a name.

There are a lot of the same things in other places and languages. "Master, Teacher" for example - they're not names either. So why isn't the suffix use extended?

Oh yes, I forgot to reply to this:

"Diru "vi" al ĉiuj kaj neniam uzu fuŝaĵon "ci" "

If the only reasoning is "no one else uses it"... I mean, no one else uses Esperanto either ; P But I think the bigger problem is people don't know they exist, because for example they're not even mentioned in some textbooks I've looked at, so of course if people don't know then they can't use them either. And some people seem to have the wrong idea, that one was informal and one was formal, even though (I believe?) Zamenhof said there was no formal and informal distinction...

My wife for example, immediately complained about Esperanto not having the distinction as soon as she looked at a list of pronouns. "It's not logical" she said. "I can think of tons of times when even English natives have gotten misunderstandings from each other from the simple lack of this distinction, which exists in so many other languages."

But even a language like English wants to tell them apart when it already mostly lost the distinctions from before (you guys, you all, you lot - ignoring the dialects that still do use "ye" ), so I think we can see that it's more useful to use ci instead of ignore it lol. But it's always hardest to be the first one to start, isn't it!

marbuljon:

Kirilo81:And people are either male or female, there is no need for a neutral term here at all.

But people and things can be called "it" when their gender isn't known and so on, I thought. Like babies. So, there is a third person-gender. (Also hermaphrodites/intersex people etc). You can also know a baby's name but not know its gender lol (a bit odd, and I know it wasn't exactly something Zamenhof thought about...).

-ĉjo and -njo presuppose some intimateness, if you don't even know a person's sex, you shouldn't use them at all. And even if all gender-mainstreamers stand on their heads, hold their breath and waggle their feet: there are only two sexes. It's not task of a language to hold ready suffixes for all possible social genders people feel a need to now.

marbuljon:Maybe it's just me but doesn't it seem a little weird? "Mother" or "Father" is not a name. It's a noun. A placeholder for a name.

There are a lot of the same things in other places and languages. "Master, Teacher" for example - they're not names either. So why isn't the suffix use extended?

I guess "mommy/daddy" are unambiguous with regard to a given child, while there are various grannies, cousins, and even more teachers etc. So Paĉjo/Panjo (similarily in the ethnic languages) are used as if they were proper nouns (at least in German the use of the article with Mama/Mami/Mutti - Papa/Papi/Vati is similar to names, not to common nouns).

marbuljon:Oh yes, I forgot to reply to this:

"Diru "vi" al ĉiuj kaj neniam uzu fuŝaĵon "ci" "

If the only reasoning is "no one else uses it"... I mean, no one else uses Esperanto either ; P But I think the bigger problem is people don't know they exist, because for example they're not even mentioned in some textbooks I've looked at, so of course if people don't know then they can't use them either. And some people seem to have the wrong idea, that one was informal and one was formal, even though (I believe?) Zamenhof said there was no formal and informal distinction...

Nope, it's the other way around (see in the Dua Libro, which is more explicit than the Fundamento): ci is +singular +informal, while vi is +/- singular +/-informal. Zamenhof introduced ci in order to satisfy the people requesting it, but never used it himself, and evidently it didn't catch on.
Of course no one prevents you from using intimate ci, but e.g. I never felt a need for it, speaking Esperanto on a daily base at home.

Kirilo81:

Nope, it's the other way around (see in the Dua Libro, which is more explicit than the Fundamento): ci is +singular +informal, while vi is +/- singular +/-informal. Zamenhof introduced ci in order to satisfy the people requesting it, but never used it himself, and evidently it didn't catch on.
Of course no one prevents you from using intimate ci, but e.g. I never felt a need for it, speaking Esperanto on a daily base at home.

There is a copy of the Dua Libro online and I did a word search for "ci" (which annoyingly brought up every instance of those two letters together, even in the middle of a word, AND every instance of cxi as well......apparently the word search doesn't "see" the circumflex accent mark) and the only passage that even mentions "ci" is:

"Vi" ni diras egale al unu persono aŭ objekto kaj al multaj; tio ĉi estas farita pro oportuneco, ĉar, parolante kun iu, ni ofte ne scias, kiel diri al li: "vi" aŭ "ci" ("ci" signifas la duan personon de l' ununombro; sed tiu ĉi vorto estas trovata sole en la plena vortaro; en la lingvo mem ĝi preskaŭ nenian estas uzata)."

As one can see, even though Dr. Z. does say "we say 'vi'......" this is not the same as saying "vi" MEANS both.....then he even says that "ci" IS the singular form. He then concludes with "it is almost never used".....not quite the same thing as "not a part of the language" or "wrong"....I mean, HE put it in there, so it can't be "not part of the language"

So, actually, in Esperanto the "ci/vi" distinction is simply one of number, not formality. What Z. said (elsewhere; and no, I can't remember where it was) was that because of the influence from other languages it could be taken as meaning informal. IOW, it only "means" informal in the mind of misinformed users/listeners because of outside influence, and not any inherent characteristic.

On a side note, Dr. Z should feel honored, though. He's on par with the Bible now: being selectively quoted (or misinterpreted, depending on how one looks at it, haha) and therefore misused as a "proof" of someone's pet belief.

marbuljon:

But even a language like English wants to tell them apart when it already mostly lost the distinctions from before (you guys, you all, you lot - ignoring the dialects that still do use "ye" ), so I think we can see that it's more useful to use ci instead of ignore it lol. But it's always hardest to be the first one to start, isn't it!

Yes, it certainly is. Mostly because thee gets accused of being "wrong" (even though thee can give examples of real live, actually-used-by-real-living-people dialects where it is used), or being an "attention whore".........

My wife brought up a new point.

"ALL names are nouns. First names, last names, nicknames, not just 'mother' and 'cousin'."

lol... I had forgotten about that.

By the way, for anyone else who might be confused, you can definitely have more than one mother, whether it's through divorce, adoption, gay parents, religion (I think a head nun is called something like that?) or otherwise. Likewise you can easily only have one grandmother or one cousin. And you definitely don't have to be close to your mother in order to call her "mum" or "mommy", it's just how you're raised to call them... in the USA and Iceland you definitely don't have to be close to someone to call them their nickname either.

I think the other thing Zamenhof said was in "Lingvaj respondoj", just because I've read that but not much other stuff haha.

marbuljon:
My wife for example, immediately complained about Esperanto not having the distinction as soon as she looked at a list of pronouns. "It's not logical" she said. "I can think of tons of times when even English natives have gotten misunderstandings from each other from the simple lack of this distinction, which exists in so many other languages."

In the US, at least, we have regionalisms like y'all, you'ns, you guys, youse guys, etc., to indicate the plural.

I don't think there's any objection to using vi ĉiuj or similar in Esperanto.