Suzumiya:grammar immutability makes it cold and robotic to me, it isn’t bad for formal and academic communication purposes, but for the colorfulness and the marks that languages leave with every idiom, every saying, every mistake and every change Esperanto is alien and unsuitable.

Thanks for your thoughts! (Might want to invest in a paragraph break, though! )

I think it is easier to be sterile or "cold" in a language which is not your native one. Since Esperanto is spoken mostly by L2 speakers, this means it is more susceptible to this phenomenon. I've noticed it a lot - there is a tendency to express oneself in the same syntax or turns of phrase, one's word choices get unimaginative ...

However, I don't think Esperanto necessarily needs to be cold. One simply needs to exercise a little more imagination than in other languages and take into account Esperanto's peculiarities and regularity to avoid monotony.

This is an area of great interest to me: I have been experimenting with stretching Esperanto prose's expressive limits (and colloquial possibilities) in the medium of the short story, in a way that is original, perhaps experimental, but without being jarring or too weird.

I'm no William Auld, but so far my results have been, I think, far from bland or sterile - though I'm not sure my command of the language has reached the highest level, which is needed to produce an effortless text.

This will seem unrelate at first, but bear with me: I have been on the board of several organizations. The hallmark of an effective organization is being undergirded by a strong set of by-laws. An interpreter's association to which I belonged even had a written mission statement, and we tried to conduct meetings according to Robert's rules of order. With one relatively short meeting per month, we put on major training events, had in speakers, and basically made incredible things happen.

On the other hand, I have been in other organizations where the constitution and by-laws were always fluid, could change at whim, and could even be tossed aside entirely--naturally, always "for a good cause". Someone in leadership would get worked up about something, and next thing you'd know, even ex-post-facto rulings would be put in place (to "correct" whatever results they didn't like). That group could meet weekly and get NOTHING accomplished.

My point? Part of the reason Esperanto has thrived is because it has as sort of "by-laws" (to borrow the analogy) that have been very slow to change. You don't up-end an entire language and make radical changes to it just to accommodate trends in political correctness--otherwise, it'll never stop. Every generation will have some new trend, and therefore some new "improvement" to make. Depending on which way the winds of social currents go, anything could become chic in time: I don't want evolutionists changing the word "man" from "viro" to "simiido", I don't want to see counter-feminists change "woman" to "hejmulino", and I don't want to see the day when socialists change the language to have wealthy people called "avaruloj". Those would be nothing more than in-your-face attempts to shove social ideas down people's throats. Well, as far as I'm concerned, "parenticxo" is absolutely no different. Esperanto is a language--not a social experiemnt: leave it alone.

Polaris:My point? Part of the reason Esperanto has thrived is because it has as sort of "by-laws" (to borrow the analogy) that have been very slow to change. You don't up-end an entire language and make radical changes to it just to accommodate trends in political correctness

You adopt.
Or you die.
English adopts.

Tangi:
You adopt.
Or you die.

What's your basis for this claim? Seems rather simplistic.

Last I checked, Esperanto is in no danger of dying out. And Esperanto is quite capable of "adapting" - notice the influx of technological terms over the past century, from telefono to modemo.

The Fundamento rules do not inhibit this kind of adaptation/evolution of the language - which is the most significant one.

Polaris:I don't want evolutionists changing the word "man" from "viro" to "simiido", I don't want to see counter-feminists change "woman" to "hejmulino", and I don't want to see the day when socialists change the language to have wealthy people called "avaruloj".

I think I see a strawman on a slippery slope

Languages in general don't undergo such changes, if you look at historical precedent. Even during the greatest political upheavals, most of language remains intact.

What is more likely to happen is for certain words to develop certain connotations (e.g., "socialist" and "liberal" are now practically insults in much of the USA).

I don't see a problem per se with gender-neutral alternatives to the 20 defaultly-gendered terms. For me, it has little to do with "political correctness" (whatever that means) and more with convenience.

In English you can say "parent" and "sibling"; in Esperanto, the classical equivalents are cumbersome: unu el la gepatroj, unu el la gefratoj. Ge- cannot be used for singular, so the obvious workaround is to introduce a new term - parento.

On the other hand, parentiĉo and parentino are more clumsy and cumbersome than patro and patrino, so I will prefer the latter.

Tempodivalse:
In English you can say "parent" and "sibling"; in Esperanto, the classical equivalents are cumbersome: unu el la gepatroj, unu el la gefratoj. Ge- cannot be used for singular, so the obvious workaround is to introduce a new term - parento.

Not that I'm promoting this ('patro aux patrino' is fine with me), but what would your reaction be to hearing ge-patr-an-o?

Hodiaŭ la poŝtistiĉo donis al mi leteron de sendintino pri sia hundetiĉo (aŭ hundiĉeto) kiu lekis katinon. Mi vidis mian najbariĉon kaj mansvingis al li por montri al li la leteron sed li ne havis tempon ĉar li tiumomente devis protekti sin kontraŭ moskitino (ĉiu scias ke la moskitiĉoj ne pikas - ili estas en la familio de gekuledoj kaj nur la kuledinoj pikas, ne la kulediĉoj). La postistiĉo foriris al la oficejo kie la gepoŝtistoj finas la tagon kaj poste iras hejmen por vidis siajn edziĉojn aŭ edzinojn kaj siajn geinfanojn, se ili havas, aŭ siajn gedorlotbestojn [mi ja havas akvarion plenan de gefiŝoj sed mi ne povas distingi facile inter la fiŝiĉoj kaj la fiŝinoj ĝis ili havas geidojn]. Uff.

eshapard:

Tempodivalse:
In English you can say "parent" and "sibling"; in Esperanto, the classical equivalents are cumbersome: unu el la gepatroj, unu el la gefratoj. Ge- cannot be used for singular, so the obvious workaround is to introduce a new term - parento.

Not that I'm promoting this ('patro aux patrino' is fine with me), but what would your reaction be to hearing ge-patr-an-o?

I would be confused. "-ano" is normally used to indicate a member of a group. So, a member of a "gepatr-" - a member of a parent? ...

Parento is better, or even unu el la gepatroj ... the only other feasible solution I see, is to develop some affix like ge- that can be used in the singular (but its usefulness would be limited to just the 20-odd familial terms since all other personal terms can already be gender-neutral by default).

Tempodivalse: Ge- cannot be used for singular, .....

Thee keeps saying this and then at other times thee says that additions to the Fundamento are OK (as opposed to kontraux Fundamenta things like -icx.

I see "-ge-" as being given an additional meaning assigned to the prefix, q.v. "used on a singular noun to create the epicene (father/mother: parent) counterpart of the root in question". We've had an entire suffix added to the list (-end-); I don't see how adding a meaning to an already existing affix can be so horrendous.

It will still be used with the plural to mean "parents" (or siblings or children etc); it will just have an additional use.

On somewhat of a tangent, I've even "invented" a couple of English words to use as the epicene counterparts to e.g. nephew/niece (sibkid) and uncle/aunt (parsib), and others. As with the additional meaning for "ge-", I'm using parts already existing in English to make new words.

Thee keeps saying this and then at other times thee says that additions to the Fundamento are OK (as opposed to kontrauxFundamenta things like -icx.

There is a good reason for ge- being only used in the plural, as it indicates the presence of both genders, not one of two genders. For this reason I find gepatro, gefrato etc. rather jarring.

Epicene singular ge- is not a small departure from the accepted definition of the prefix, though I would agree that it is probably less obviously kontraufundamenta than icxismo.