hi, dead-tired right now so too tired to search through the forum properly for old posts

how do i say ĉjo, njo, but for neuter objects?

(EDIT: a neuter form is necessary for when talking about intersex people/hermaphrodites/angels [angels are traditionally intersex in Christianity or so I hear], monsters, and other such things, for example in fiction that takes place in such a world, or to your actual intersex friend. it would also be useful for when translating things that use a similar suffix in other languages, when teaching that language, ex the Swedish and Japanese examples below. lastly it could be useful when translating from a language that only uses basically "it" and not "he/she", ex Finnish, but where the gender of the person is still unknown due to their name being non-gender-specific or foreign. That is to say, this neuter suffix is not necessarily a use that is needed in everyday life but is certainly needed for translations and fiction translations especially.)

ex. in swedish we have "-is" which is stolen from latin (though it doesn't mean anything special in latin, it just became corrupted) and is a "cute diminuative suffix", which means:
gullis - cutie
promis - promenade (cutened)
i worked as a postis - i worked as a post officer (cutened)
godis - "goodies", candy

japanese can also put くん　ちゃん たん etc. onto random nouns in order to create a nickname which has no gender (not to mention that even those normal first two aren't strictly for one gender or the other to begin with).

in english we have "baby talk" which i guess is similar, as well as the general "-ie, -y, -ette" endings like "puppy, cutie, omlette, laundrette"... see, we also put it at the end of normal nouns (laundry = laundrette) though it's a stolen wordform of course.

and so on. i just want to know how to suffix-ify the third gender. i'm not ruling out the possibilty that a suffix exists and i just don't know about it, because i found out about "ci, vi" only fairly late among other things...

(EDIT: Based on a sudden epiphany, I realized that since the basic noun ending -o can mean any gender, and it's just that -ino is explicitly feminine, then it makes total sense that ĉjo could be for any gender and -njo is explicitly feminine.)

marbuljon:ex. in swedsih we have "-is" which is stolen from latin and is a "cute diminuative suffix"

Could you give a Latin example where -is is a diminutive morpheme? I know -ulus, -ullus, -nculus, -io, etc, but I have never heard of -is as a Latin diminutive.

eto can be used as a cute diminutive suffix, though in some instances it might get confused with the more literal meaning. And then there are some roots that end in -et anyway.

So context might be necessary to make the meaning clear.

nornen:

marbuljon:ex. in swedsih we have "-is" which is stolen from latin and is a "cute diminuative suffix"

Could you give a Latin example where -is is a diminutive morpheme? I know -ulus, -ullus, -nculus, -io, etc, but I have never heard of -is as a Latin diminutive.

The ending -is has been used in parodic student slang since long ago. In his play Erasmus Montanus the Danish writer Ludvig Holberg lets a school teacher pretend that he knows a lot of latin by putting the endings -us and -is to Danish words: Like "Grava pano -> panus gravis. Fajna pano -> panus finis".
Cute diminutive suffix it became later, in Finnish and Swedish, but not in Danish.

Edited

> how do i say ĉjo, njo, but for neuter objects?

ĉjo, njo are for names only/mostly. Use -rjo or -jo ( preceded by anything except "n" and "cx" ) for people:

Sinclair -> Sirjo

> swedsih we have "-is" which is stolen from latin and is a "cute diminuative suffix"

Use "-et" :

hundo -> hundeto
domo -> dometo

> about "ci, vi" only fairly late among other things

Diru "vi" al cxiuj kaj neniam uzu fusxajxon "ci"

(kiam vi volas insulti, uzu verajn fivortojn, ne insultu per pronomoj)

cxjo njo... tjo (eto)

"he, tjoj, ne timu la malhelon, atjoj restas apud vi"

Okay, thanks guys. May I ask, are "rjo" and "jo" official or what?

I forgot to say earlier, yeah, the -is from Latin just came from academic people messing around with language historically, I have no idea what it actually means in Latin.

hundo -> hundeto
domo -> dometo

I think that would make people misunderstand and think I meant a "little dog" or a "little house" when I actually meant a "cute house" (or, in swedish, when I actually meant "I am in a funny or friendly mood where I want to nickname things for no reason" ). Is that just me?

I mean, take the example above - "I worked as a (little) post officer" - ??

No, they are not official and they will probably never be, as they are senceless.

In the Fundamento it is clearly stated that -ĉjo and -njo are confined to proper first names.*

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

*In all other cases Zamenhof used -et-, with the notable exeptions of Paĉjo and Panjo.
These two words may be tolerated, as they were in use already when the Fundamento appeared and function as quasi-proper names for the parents (hence the lack of the article; consequently they should be written upper-case). I once made a search for other kinship terms with -ĉjo and -njo, and the only one getting more than 1-2 hits was avinjo, which is however critical, as it is neither old nor unambiguous like Paĉjo and Panjo (there are usually two avinoj).

marbuljon:Okay, thanks guys. May I ask, are "rjo" and "jo" official or what?

So far as I know, there is no official suffix for what you are looking for. Also, amigueo and Clarence666 are not people I would turn to for language-usage advice; amigueo, for one, has a reputation around here for speaking gibberish. I mean no offense to either of them; I just find their language usage to be, well, somewhat... nonstandard. In different ways.

Kirilo81:No, they are not official and they will probably never be, as they are senceless.

In the Fundamento it is clearly stated that -ĉjo and -njo are confined to proper first names.*

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

*In all other cases Zamenhof used -et-, with the notable exeptions of Paĉjo and Panjo.
These two words may be tolerated, as they were in use already when the Fundamento appeared and function as quasi-proper names for the parents (hence the lack of the article; consequently they should be written upper-case). I once made a search for other kinship terms with -ĉjo and -njo, and the only one getting more than 1-2 hits was avinjo, which is however critical, as it is neither old nor unambiguous like Paĉjo and Panjo (there are usually two avinoj).

Yeah, the only times usually I see -njo used with something other than a proper name, is "panjo" and "avinjo". I did once see "knajno", in an Esperanto translation of "Do You Wanna Dance?" (Ĉu Vi Volas Danci?). Which is no authority on the topic; I see weird words in songs more than anywhere else!