Is it possible to use KO-? Kopatro = patro/patri kun (alia patro aŭ patrino), in the sense of some kind of complement or part of a group of two or more persons.
ePIV defines ko- as a prefix used in math to show some kind of relation.

dbob:Is it possible to use KO-? Kopatro = patro/patri kun (alia patro aŭ patrino), in the sense of some kind of complement or part of a group of two or more persons.
ePIV defines ko- as a prefix used in math to show some kind of relation.

You could try if you wanted, but I suspect the vast majority of Esperantists would not know what you're talking about. I certainly wouldn't.

Remember that many or most affixes in PIV are hopelessly obscure, or relegated to technical jargon - for example, -ala, -oza, -iva are likely to be seen only in arcane scientific or linguistic contexts (like maybe PAG).

If gepatro would mean "parent of any of the two sexes", what would gepatroj mean then? Would it be the classical "father(s) and mother(s)" or would it be the plural of gepatro, hence "parents of any sex" - quite the opposite?
In my opinion gepatrano is logically impeccable, but clumsy, while parento would solve all problems at once.
And for me the biggest problem is not the small amount of queer parents (etc.), but the need to speak of parents without implying the sex, which is quite difficult with the traditional expressions.

Kirilo81:And for me the biggest problem is not the small amount of queer parents (etc.), but the need to speak of parents without implying the sex, which is quite difficult with the traditional expressions.

It is also difficult e.g. in German or Spanish.

"Eltern" is fine for the plural, but in singular you have to use "Elternteil", which maps exactly to "gepatrano".
"Padres" is both fathers and parents, and "padre" is basically father, but if you see something saying "Firma del padre" you won't have problems signing there if you are the mother.

I think we are making an issue out of something in Eo, which is simply accept in our native languages.

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--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, you are speaking there out of a privileged position. Esperanto as a language can easily express all the things that occur in the world as you know it. It can describe your (admittedly presumed) sexual self-definition and the ones of the members of your social peer group. That. Is. A. Privilege.

Out of this privilege it's easy to say that reforms are not necessary and all that's occurring outside of the world as you know it is just "some trend" or something "chic". It's a matter of fact, that to some speakers of Esperanto it is important to be able to define non gender-binary people and they can't, because the language does not have the features needed.

Do you realize that all the words you suggest that counter-feminists or socialists and so on may want to introduce are completely part of existing Esperanto? They also do have the privilege to express their concepts easily. Non gender-binary people don't have that privilege.

According to my maybe limited observation in development of society worldwide the perception of sex and gender is changing sustainably. Esperanto and any other language have to somehow adopt. What is a language that cannot express everything its speakers need to express to use the language as everyday communication language?

Calling this phenomenon "a trend" or "chic" does not solve the problem. It just ignores it.

Esperanto is not a social experiment, but it has to supply the features to use it to do any kind of social experiment. Otherwise it's an incomplete language.

johmue:Out of this privilege it's easy to say that reforms are not necessary and all that's occurring outside of the world as you know it is just "some trend" or something "chic". It's a matter of fact, that to some speakers of Esperanto it is important to be able to define non gender-binary people and they can't, because the language does not have the features needed..

This makes a lot of sense. I propose that we who are privileged gender binary people stay firmly out of this, and let the gender non-binary decide how they want to call themselves in Esperanto. I think it's inappropriate for a gender binary person to be telling gender non-binary people how to call themselves, and this includes gender binary people "helpfully" devising weird pronouns to assist the non-binary. Let's stay out of it.

Tempodivalse:You could try if you wanted, but I suspect the vast majority of Esperantists would not know what you're talking about.

That’s my feeling too. I just thought that maybe an already established prefix could be used to mean the idea of gepatro, but I guess the KO- prefix is so infrequent and its use is so specialized that a kunmetaĵo using it would be like a completely new word. Your example with -iva reminded me the thread I started about belsoniva.

Tempodivalse:

Bemused:Here is a simple non ambiguous way to introduce icx with zero disruption to exisiting vocabulary.
It removes the need for male only words for different species, eg tauro, stalono.
It removes the need to find workarounds to express the concept of "parent".
It bypasses the whole "discussion" (read ongoing warfare) about how to express gender neutral forms of the 20(ish) family/relationship terms.
The Ido language used a similar technique to make this a non issue more than 100 years ago.

Hm yes, I remember seeing that.

But we should keep in mind that this "ongoing warfare" is more of a typhoon in a teacup - to the large majority of Esperantists, it's just irrelevant - the original terms work just fine.

The only noteworthy issue here, I think, is how to more cleanly express some terms like "parent" other than unu el la gepatroj.

According to the link you posted, PIV lists gepatro as a possibility, but its current use is vanishingly small. Only one instance in the Tekstaro:

->Jen ebla tasko, sendube pens-instiga, por gepatro kaj gefilo: kundiskuti la verkon.

A person reading your post and not following the original link could gain the mistaken idea that gepatro is being suggested as a way to express parent.

This is not the case. The term suggested to express parent is gxenitoro.

Bemused:A person reading your post and not following the original link could gain the mistaken idea that gepatro is being suggested as a way to express parent.

This is not the case. The term suggested to express parent is gxenitoro.

Thanks for the clarification. Here's the part of the linked article that I mentioned, for reference:

http://www.romaniczo.com/esperanto/gramatiko/gramm...:Sometime after 1980, however, the Plena Ilustrita Vortaro included singular gepatro in its pages to mean “either father or mother” while still maintaining that ge- otherwise means “both sexes together”.

I find this curious - can anyone verbatim cite the relative part of PIV? Not that everything in PIV is actually used ...

It's in PIV presently, gepatro = patro aux patrino.

You can look it up at vortaro.org, which is the PIV online. Use your lernu account to log in, no need to create a separate account.