alighozali:Yeah, as a non-IndoEuropean native speaker, I feel Esperanto is too European. If I don't recognize at least 2 different "big" European languages like English, French, German, or Spanish... I won't easily recognize the meaning of the word. Besides, some grammars are like German for the accusative which indicates the movement. But the way of creating new words by agglutination is very similar like my native tongue, so I can adapt easily.

What irritates me is this speaking of "European languages" when clearly one means the European branch of the Indo-European languages (let me mark those with the term IEₑ ). This because one of the most-spoken Indo-European languages is Hindi, and I speak natively an "European" language – European in the sence that it is spoken in Europe – which definitely is not Indo-European. But let us leave that aside.

I felt quite strongly the same way as you: Esperanto is too IEₑ . While in Esperanto there are words ,for instance, from Arabic, those are taken via an IEₑ where they possibly already have undergone a change in spelling and/or meaning. Then I read some articles from the Swiss linguistic Claude Piron and discovered the non-IEₑ nature of Esperanto in the form of agglutination.

My current standing on this matter is close to the bonalingvo movement: use the existing mechanisms, mostly the agglutination, to express ideas instead of introducing "more accurate" new words, which a hundred years ago came from French, nowadays come from English. And if a new word is really needed, try to find one which can take many pre- and postfixes instead of being one time off – and even better if this root is a non-IEₑ.

Is this thread woke? Only joking.

European vocabulary makes good sense for an international language, especially the Latinate stuff, because it has extensive usage on ALL of the continents, partly as a result of colonialism.

The majority of people in the Americas tend to speak Romance languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese); in Oceania, English and French are major languages and Polynesian tongues have taken loanwords from them; Africa has large areas which speak English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Afrikaans; Asia has substantial areas where English and Russian are spoken, as well as places where Portuguese, French, Dutch and Spanish have had an influence on local languages. Arabic, Hindi, Turkish, Hebrew, Japanese, Malay, Tagalog all have European influence. So yes, European vocabulary is a good thing.

Where this falls down in my view is phonetics, because some sounds are hard for some people to say, and grammar. Chinese style grammar would have made Esperanto easier.

As for the sexist stuff, every definite article is feminine (la), as is the adjective. Unlike Semitic languages and some other languages like Japanese, forms don't change according to the gender of the person speaking. So there are counter arguments which are rarely addressed.

I'll let Foucault answer the rest.

Metsis:

alighozali:Yeah, as a non-IndoEuropean native speaker, I feel Esperanto is too European. If I don't recognize at least 2 different "big" European languages like English, French, German, or Spanish... I won't easily recognize the meaning of the word. Besides, some grammars are like German for the accusative which indicates the movement. But the way of creating new words by agglutination is very similar like my native tongue, so I can adapt easily.

What irritates me is this speaking of "European languages" when clearly one means the European branch of the Indo-European languages (let me mark those with the term IEₑ ). This because one of the most-spoken Indo-European languages is Hindi, and I speak natively an "European" language – European in the sence that it is spoken in Europe – which definitely is not Indo-European. But let us leave that aside.

I felt quite strongly the same way as you: Esperanto is too IEₑ . While in Esperanto there are words ,for instance, from Arabic, those are taken via an IEₑ where they possibly already have undergone a change in spelling and/or meaning. Then I read some articles from the Swiss linguistic Claude Piron and discovered the non-IEₑ nature of Esperanto in the form of agglutination.

My current standing on this matter is close to the bonalingvo movement: use the existing mechanisms, mostly the agglutination, to express ideas instead of introducing "more accurate" new words, which a hundred years ago came from French, nowadays come from English. And if a new word is really needed, try to find one which can take many pre- and postfixes instead of being one time off – and even better if this root is a non-IEₑ.

I got the same stance with you. Yes, Esperanto is clearly Eurocentric. But, I am understand well with Zamenhoff's decision to create the basic word "almost" solely from European languages, cuz he needed to attract the people to join the early Esperanto movement, whom are Europeans or citizens who speak any European languages. So, he designed a conlang which its vocab were easily relatable with European people at that time. It is totally understandable.

But, as the time goes, I rarely see any basic root word taken from any other language beside "European languages" (even Hindi as an IEe language), as the common words in Esperanto. This is why, as a non-native European language, nor a native of IEe, I often found Esperanto is a bit hard. Why? Some basic words are too easy for any European-background speaker. But for me it is like a very new thing that is totally unrelatable. It is like without a background of understanding several European languages, I just have no clue, just try to memorize those roots and bonege . That's my first impression on Esperanto honestly. At some parts, I just cannot relate Esperanto with any other languages except just the European languages.

There are some non-IEₑ words, actually more than you can right away list up. For a personal interest I have collected the following list. Note that most words had already been loaned into one or more of the source languages of Esperanto. Please let me know about words that I have missed.

• ajatolo ← la persa آیت‌الله
  
• algebro ← IEₑ ← la araba الْجَبْر‎
  
• algoritmo ← IEₑ ← la persa خوارزم‎
  
• alkoholo ← IEₑ ← la araba
  
• animeo ← IEₑ ← la japana アニメ ← la angla animation
  
• artiŝoko ← IEₑ ← la araba خرشوف
  
• baobabo ← IEₑ ← la araba أَبُو حِبَاب‎
  
• Barato ← la hinda भारत
  
• bildingo ← la japana ビルディング ← la angla building
  
• boaco ← la nordsamea boazu
  
• ĉifri ← IEₑ ← la araba صِفر‎
  
• ĉifro ← IEₑ ← la araba صِفر
  
• daimio ← la japana 大名
  
• dajkono ← la japana 大根
  
• edzino ← la jida* רביצין
  
• eno ← IEₑ ← la japana 円
  
• eŭska ← la eŭska euskara
  
• faraono ← IEₑ ← hebreo ← la praegipta
  
• fakiro ← IEₑ ← la araba فَقِير
  
• gejŝo ← IEₑ ← la japana 芸者
  
• hajko ← IEₑ ← la japana 俳句 aŭ はいく
  
• halala ← IEₑ ← la araba حلال
  
• haŝio ← la japana 箸)
  
• haŝiŝo ← IEₑ ← la araba حَشِيش‎
  
• hazardo ← IEₑ ← la araba اَلزَّهْر‎
  
• ĥalifo/kalifo ← IEₑ ← la araba خَلِيفَة‎
  
• imamo ← la araba إِمَام‎
  
• jen ← hebreo?
  
• kafo ← IEₑ ← la araba قهوة
  
• kamikazo ← IEₑ ← la japana 神風 aŭ かみかぜ
  
• karaoki ← la japana カラオケ
  
• karaoko ← la japana カラオケ
  
• Kartvelio ← la kartvela საქართველო
  
• kibuco ← hebreo קיבוץ
  
• kikaro ← hebreo
  
• kimono ← IEₑ ← la japana 着物
  
• lazuro ← IEₑ ← la persa لاجورد‎
  
• lirli ← la finna liristä
  
• mangao ← la japana 漫画
  
• mikado ← IEₑ ← la japana 御門
  
• ninĵo ← la japana 忍者 aŭ にんじゃ
  
• nufaro ← IEₑ ← la persa ← sanskrito नीलोत्पल
  
• oazo ← IEₑ ← hebreo ← la praegipta
  
• rameno ← la japana ラーメン
  
• safario ← IEₑ ← svahilo ← la araba سفاري
  
• samumo ← IEₑ ← la araba سَمُوم‎
  
• sultano ← IEₑ ← la araba ← la aramea
  
• sumoo ← IEₑ ← la japana 相撲
  
• ŝario ← la araba شَرِيعَة‎
  
• ŝinkanseno ← la japana 新幹線
  
• ŝoguno ← IEₑ ← la japana 将軍 ← la japana 征夷大将軍
  
• ŝurikeno ← la japana 手裏剣
  
• suŝio ← IEₑ ← la japana 寿司
  
• tabuo ← IEₑ ← la tonga
  
• taso ← IEₑ ← la araba طَاس
  
• ŭonbulismo ← la korea 원불교
  
• veziro ← IEₑ ← la araba وَزِير‎
  
• zorio ← la japana 草履

*: La jida estas eŭropa hindeŭropa lingvo, sed ne multe konata,

About gender. Esperanto is not male supremacist, it is only assymetrical, where the marked gender is femenine. The other sexes (not only male) are LI, and the marked gender is SXI.

In my opinion the simple way to make Esperanto gender symetrical is introduce some male words (HI, -ICX) and a specially non binary words (RI, -?).

Well, i present you the challenge to find the nonbinary affix for Esperanto.

amigueo:About gender. Esperanto is not male supremacist, it is only assymetrical, where the marked gender is femenine. The other sexes (not only male) are LI, and the marked gender is SXI.

In my opinion the simple way to make Esperanto gender symetrical is introduce some male words (HE, -ICX) and a specially non binary words (RI, -?).

Well, i present you the challenge to find the nonbinary affix for Esperanto.

1. The non-binary suffix has already been proposed. It's -ip

2. The pure fundament solution of an ungendered pronoun has always been "ĝi". The usage of li for such cases was taken over by convention from other languages at the time of Zamenhof. He even wrote a language response remark regarding the matter (See Respondo 28, la Revuo, 1907 Aŭgusto or the book lingvoj respondoj respondo 91). The issue with that was always, that people from stuffy other languages thought it's inferior when they are talked to at the level of animals and objects. So "li" stuck and now we have another pronoun "ri" which is supposed to be a kind of polite pronoun for beings with a consciousness, which gender is not know.

3. When you don't have ĝ, ĵ, ĥ, ŭ, ŝ, ĉ on the keyboard the only solution for typing was always on typewriters the h-method. The X-method was only introduced recently, because computers can more easily apply substitutions this way. By using the X-method people show their ignorance about the language.

4. The eurocentrism of Esperanto comes mostly because of the languages which were selected by Zamenhof at the time of writing of being the most "international languages". If you select them in a time, where Europe was all over the world you get this result. Zamenhof was aware of other languages, but was more concerned with the overall fitting together of words within the languages and how it sounds overall. By basing it on Romance languages it all sounds a little bit more melodic and a little bit like Spanish (duh!). A longer text, where he discussed his reasoning can be found in his language responses "pri la internacieco de la vortaroj" La Esperantisto, 1891, page 49-50 or the book "lingvoj respondoj", respondo numero 51). So it was his taste, his feeling of what a good enough sounding language would sound like, as he wanted to use it in music and poems, which contributed to this eurocentrism. Also what today is "eurocentrical" could be in 200 years just the common ground, when all the other languages have been conquered and died out by English. Would then be this weird, by then old and forgotten, language "Esperanto" still be not good enough for being a better lingua franca?

5. Words are not fixed in Esperanto, when words can be added to it, which fit into the overall language and make it more open to different cultures and language origins, then people can do that and DO that already. It's a spoken language now and everybody with a brain can make his own contributions to it.

6. Maybe, just maybe Esperanto is good enough to be used. Maybe it has it's own right to exist? All these discussions about feature X about the language add more doubt about the "right and ideal language" than to start using the language. Esperanto is not here to be looked at in awe for being a beacon of perfection in language design, but a language to be spoken in an alternative international community. It's supposed to bring people together and foster an international culture of understanding and caring. The last thing is something we need in this current time as we are collectively not doing enough to stop the climate catastrophe and are nurturing nationalistic movements and not abandoning nationalism as we should.

Though I still don't have enough vocabulary to participate "Esperante" I wanna give my two cents on the topic...

Eurocentric -> Many things were created by Europeans (as if Europeans were all the same of course haha) but as far as I know it hasn't mattered as Europeans are people just like everyone else😅... Just like many things came from Asia and Africa or even the Americas and are equally useful and interesting.

This argument: European or any other Culture = not good enough is just really unfortunate to say the least

I'm not sure Esperanto is going to be the international auxiliary language which Zamenhof envisioned, but it's an interesting idea that should be considered thoroughly as it is neutral and kinda nice hehe if I can say it myself.

Neutrality -> if it's really necessary, just choose a pronoun like Gxi or Ri or Li and make it "neutral" -> keeping the gender neutrality done.

As far as I have read about this issue, I really tend to think that Gxi or Li would be more appropriate. The whole issue with Gxi being It reminds of English speaking people doing English speaking things hehe, just kidding (I'm just playing with the first argument). I wouldn't mind a third option though, Ri just doesn't ring the bell to me. "R" (Ro) per si is kind of hard to speak for many people, so why not choose an easier consonant???

Let's not -> Genderfy words like most of other languages do as it is really a terrible way to remember which is which. Just take Latin for example, one would find a male, female and a neutral variant... Just don't, c'mon! As someone who speaks Portuguese and who is trying to learn French... It isn't pretty hehehe

Dankon al vi por la "konversacio"! Ĝis

Hell_12

There is already a trend against taking in new words. See the article Ĉu la 15-a regulo forvelkas? by Libera folio. Furthermore there is a school called Bona lingvo which aims to avoid taking words for ideas that can already by expressed by more fundemental incl. oficialaj aldonoj vocalabulary. I wholeheartly recommend to check their list whenever in doubt.

Akademio de Esperanto explicitly decided this year that they do not decide about ri or any other suggested pronoun for that matter. See the article La Akademio: ”Ri” devos atendi ĝis 2031 by Libera folio.

Having said that, there is a trend to de-genderfy titles etc. For instance you hear mostly instruisto for all teachers, not so much instruistino, and all friends are just amikoj. In practice only words of closest relatives are likely to remain gendered. Note, I wrote "closest" as some already use kuzo for any cousin.

Thanks Metsis!

I'm gonna read it right now! But, of course, don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating against change or something. But I can be against making the learning of Esperanto harder as I'm still learning it myself...

Anyways, I found the idea of de-genderfying titles extremely interesting! So "in" can become really just a tool when it's really necessary to differ male and female, but on daily basis we'd be able to call someone without worrying too much about it! Thanks for all the info!

I'll be following this thread to see where will it go ^^

Zamenhof ne konus ĉiujn lingvojn en la mondo. Li konstruis la Esperanton per radikaloj inter ĉefaj lingvoj tiam.
Ĉar tiuj havis la plej numero de parolantoj kaj Zamenhof havis afinecon kun ili.