Christa627:

Tempodivalse:In modern usage, however, the supposedly "male" default form is generally considered gender-neutral, with the exception of family terms (patro, avo, nepo, etc) and a handful of other words like "viro". "Knabo" could thus be used to refer to a girl as well as a boy, depending on the context (though "knabino" is recommended if you wanted to clarify or emphasise the gender).

No, "knabo" is just like "viro"; it is specifically male. If you want a term that can be a boy or girl, use "infano" or "junulo" (which last is, as far as I know, somewhat more likely to be considered male by default, but can be either, or so I'm told. At any rate, PIV doesn't say anything about "-ul" being male).

My error. I must have been thinking of "infano". Although, I have seen some people attempt to use "knabo" as gender-neutral in the past.

vikungen:
The way that most people do it these days are:
Bovo might be a cow or a bull, bovino is a cow, virbovo can be used for a bull.

Viro is a man, not a person which gender is not known. Virino is a woman. Viriĉo is nothing.

Yes, viro is a man.
Therefore virbovo is a manbovine aka a minotaur.
Which is why the term tauxro was introduced to mean bull.
If this process was used to make a new non ambiguous word for the adult male of every species the learning load would be dramatically increased.

Which is why icx is so useful.
Instead of learning a new word for every species, just learn one affix which can be applied to all neutral words with no possible misunderstanding.

As for viricxo, there is no need, it would mean male man.
Viro means man, virino means woman, persono means person.
If you wanted to say man or woman without using viro or virino you could always use personicxo (male person) or personino (female person).

Bemused:
As for viricxo, there is no need, it would mean male man.

Cool.
Ye can call me viriĉo!

grrr.

Bemused: If you wanted to say man or woman without using viro or virino you could always use personicxo (male person) or personino (female person).

Could that be shortened to ulicxo and ulino?

malglatamelo:

Bemused: If you wanted to say man or woman without using viro or virino you could always use personicxo (male person) or personino (female person).

Could that be shortened to ulicxo and ulino?

or 'ino' and 'malino'.

Bemused:

vikungen:
The way that most people do it these days are:
Bovo might be a cow or a bull, bovino is a cow, virbovo can be used for a bull.

Viro is a man, not a person which gender is not known. Virino is a woman. Viriĉo is nothing.

Yes, viro is a man.
Therefore virbovo is a manbovine aka a minotaur.
Which is why the term tauxro was introduced to mean bull.
If this process was used to make a new non ambiguous word for the adult male of every species the learning load would be dramatically increased.

Which is why icx is so useful.
Instead of learning a new word for every species, just learn one affix which can be applied to all neutral words with no possible misunderstanding.

As for viricxo, there is no need, it would mean male man.
Viro means man, virino means woman, persono means person.
If you wanted to say man or woman without using viro or virino you could always use personicxo (male person) or personino (female person).

Yeah, very useful, because most of the worlds population really often needs spesific words to differ between male and female animals.
Honestly dude, unless you are a farmer you would very rarely need a word like "kokiĉo", "boviĉo", "porkiĉo" ktp. There's no problem in just saying vira bovo kaj ina bovo.. I don't think I have ever used the Norwegian (my mother tongue) word for a female pig "purke", except for while trying to appear like a besserwisser in front of my friends from the city.

Bemused:Yes, viro is a man.
Therefore virbovo is a manbovine aka a minotaur.

And ĉefo is a boss, therefore ĉefurbo is bosses' town.

I use the prefixoid vir- quite often, even with people, not only animals, and I've never encountered ambiguities, AFAIR. So I think there is no dire need for another affix here.
But of course -iĉ- would do the trick, too, and would be more symmetrical. From the point of view of the Fundamento it is totally OK, as long as we don't use it male roots (as you wrote yourself).

vejktoro:

malglatamelo:

Bemused: If you wanted to say man or woman without using viro or virino you could always use personicxo (male person) or personino (female person).

Could that be shortened to ulicxo and ulino?

or 'ino' and 'malino'.

If affixes can be used as words in their own right, then there is no reason they cannot be combined to make new words as in ulicxo or ulino.

However ino means female and malino means opposite of female which would generally be taken to mean male.
If they were to be used standing alone the question would be female what? or male what?
In my culture to refer to a woman as a female (as in "The female over there." ) would be taken as a sign of disrespect.

vikungen:

Bemused:

vikungen:
The way that most people do it these days are:
Bovo might be a cow or a bull, bovino is a cow, virbovo can be used for a bull.

Viro is a man, not a person which gender is not known. Virino is a woman. Viriĉo is nothing.

Yes, viro is a man.
Therefore virbovo is a manbovine aka a minotaur.
Which is why the term tauxro was introduced to mean bull.
If this process was used to make a new non ambiguous word for the adult male of every species the learning load would be dramatically increased.

Which is why icx is so useful.
Instead of learning a new word for every species, just learn one affix which can be applied to all neutral words with no possible misunderstanding.

As for viricxo, there is no need, it would mean male man.
Viro means man, virino means woman, persono means person.
If you wanted to say man or woman without using viro or virino you could always use personicxo (male person) or personino (female person).

Yeah, very useful, because most of the worlds population really often needs spesific words to differ between male and female animals.
Honestly dude, unless you are a farmer you would very rarely need a word like "kokiĉo", "boviĉo", "porkiĉo" ktp. There's no problem in just saying vira bovo kaj ina bovo.. I don't think I have ever used the Norwegian (my mother tongue) word for a female pig "purke", except for while trying to appear like a besserwisser in front of my friends from the city.

As for the need to specify gender I agree with you 100%. For most people, most of the time, there is no need to specify gender. However for a rancher it would be far more efficient to have his ranch hands spend the day rounding up bovidicxoj (bull calves), then to have them spend the day at the pub and then report that they could not find any virbovidoj (minotaur calves).

As for vira bovo, that would be a "manly bovine". Would that be one that wears an open neck shirt unbuttoned halfway to the navel and a gold chain around the neck? Or am I channelling some 80's TV show?

My guess is that the problem stems from that 100 years ago people were much more "polite" and always pointed out the gender of the thing even when it wasn't necessary. So even though they could just say ex. "homo - a human", they would always say "homino" when talking about a lady because they felt it was impolite to not mention her gender. Then, since they always pointed out -ino to begin with, they didn't feel the need to add vir- in most cases because "if I don't mention that it's female then it's not female", and that's how the base word became seen as more "male all the time" (simply through usage).

For my thoughts, I think all nouns in -o should be any gender, and to make them specifically female we add -in and specifically male we add vir-. So I think "patro" should mean "parent", and "virpatro - father, partrino - mother". It just makes the language more regular. However it won't become this way if most people stick to using simply "patro" to only mean "father", etc.

Normally I don't like the idea of changing any "rules" in Esperanto. But I think little things like this, which are actually changed to be more logical and regular, can only help.
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"Therefore virbovo is a manbovine aka a minotaur."
No, because we can do this:

Viro = a male (of any species)
Vira = male (not "human" or "human-male"!!)
Vireco = male-ness, masculinity (not "humanity, human-ness"!)
Vireca = masculine, male-like (not "human-like"!!)

Same for "ino". Thus:

Virbovo, vira bovo = a male bovine.
Bovviro, bova viro = a male who is either an actual bovine, or who is some other species and is acting/appearing like a bovine.
Bovino = a female bovine
Homo = a human, a person
Hombovo = a minotaur
Bovhomo = either a minotaur, or a human who seems like a bovine

There's no reason why "viro" should suddenly mean "human" and not "male" no matter where it's placed. Words just don't change meaning like that.

I think the reason why the dictionaries say "viro = a man" is probably because usually we are talking about people when we use the -o ending anyway. That's also why they say "ulo = a person" and not "ulo = a being". But if you read older texts for learning Esperanto, they are more clear on that "ulo" is simply "a being".