Zam_franca:

Ploppsy32:This is my belief about the suffix "ino" so far.

The suffix "ino" is demeaning because it treats females like they are secondary. A mother is not a female father. Patrino implies this because the language takes the word "patro" and changes it into a female version. A mother is not a female father; a mother is a female parent. I feel like this goes for other words ending in "ino"

Am I wrong? I mean this sincerely.

Ploppsy32:I never said that Esperanto aims to be a perfect language. Since language is a reflection of culture and culture is a way people live life and people are imperfect there is no perfect language.

Feminism should not have to be tacked on like it is something extra.

The word "kato" is inherently male so saying katino is different than saying patrino

As Nornen already told you, learning a language can be useful if you want to criticise it.

Apparently you do not know the exact meaning of "-in-". So https://lernu.net/gramatiko/sufiksoj :

IN
IN = "the sex capable of giving birth", female. The IN suffix can be used only for something that can have sex, namely a person or an animal. IN adds the meaning of being female (and removes the meaning of being male, as necessary).

IN is most frequently added to a word that has a masculine meaning. The word then changes to have a feminine meaning.

patro → patrino = a female human who has given birth to a child, a mother
viro → virino = an adult female human, a woman
knabo → knabino = a young female human, a girl
avo → avino = the mother of a father or mother, a grandmother
reĝo → reĝino = a woman who reigns the same way that a man does, the wife of a king, a queen
The IN suffix can also be added to a word that is gender-neutral, but that is done much less frequently. The gender-neutral word then changes to have a female meaning:

homo → homino = a female human
aŭtoro → aŭtorino = a female author
pasaĝero → pasaĝerino = a female passenger
besto → bestino = a female animal
mortinto → mortintino = a dead woman
With a neutral word, male gender can be shown by using the root VIR as a prefix or as an adjective.

There are several words that inherently indicate the female gender: damo (dame), nimfo (nymph), matrono (matron), putino (prostitute) (not a compound word!) and others. IN should not be added to this kind of word.

Compare to "vir-" https://lernu.net/gramatiko/afiksecaj_elementoj :

VIR
VIR is used as a prefix to show male sex. It can be compared with the suffix IN. VIR can therefore only be used with a root that can have a gender, and only with words that are not inherently male.

VIR is used as a prefix mainly for animal words: virĉevalo, virkato, virbovo, virhundido, virbesto.

VIR can also be used like a prefix on words for people: virhomo, virprezidanto, virsekretario. But VIR is normally used as an adjective for indicating people: vira homo, vira prezidanto, vira sekretario.

The root VIR, however, is sometimes left out even when a male animal or human is being referred to.

Note that the word viro (man), used independently, always means "adult male person", while VIR used as a prefix only shows the male sex (not a person being human, nor adult). The word vira (manly, related to men) sometimes only shows male sex and sometimes indicates that something is human or adult, depending on context.

"

The root VIR, however, is sometimes left out even when a male animal or human is being referred to.

"
This is not a problem. If you think that genre matters in the word you want to say, then say "virkato". I guess the ones who say "kato" instead of "virkato" are just influenced by their native language.
For instance I do not have the habit to say a word like "virkato" in French : it does not exist. There is "chat" which is both male and neutral. Also note that there is the word "chatte", which is female, but sometimes we just do not care about one cat's gender and we just say "chat" even if it a female.

I feel like this still treats women like they are secondary.

Feelings are valid in the sense that you feel what you feel. Feelings can be invalid to the degree that they do not reflect the reality of a situation.

Women are not being treated as secondary here, regardless of how much you wish to believe\feel that that is the case. Instead of imposing your own prejudices on Esperanto, maybe you should just learn Esperanto.

And yes, you appear to be prejudiced in this regard. You have no actual evidence of Esperanto treating women as secondary, but your attitude appears to be that by God you're going to find some, come hell, or high water, or whether it's actually there or not!

But let's, for the sake of argument, say that you identify some part of Esperanto that really is sexist, unfair to a gender, etc. Let's say that "patrino" ISN'T just a word for mother whose derivation is otherwise essentially meaningless, but is, in fact, an appalling slap in the face to all women, everywhere. Or maybe the slap-issue is something else. I'm just using patrino as an example. Whatever it is...

What do you expect to happen?

I mean, WE are not the Esperanto Council of Elders. We, here on the Lernu! forum are, like, twenty people? Fifty? Two hundred? Whatever the traffic might be on Lernu!, it's not terribly huge compared to the world. And we don't control the language. Even if you convince us of the egregious sexism of our Esperanto ways, the fact is that the Esperanto language simply is what it is, and it's spoken by... who knows how many, but the lower estimate seems to be around two million? Toss in Duolingo and maybe that's upped to three mil now? You must see what I'm getting at here. You don't need to convince US that some fundamental change needs to occur. You need to convince THEM - the global Esperanto speaking public. Because until THEY start using the language differently, it's going to remain what it is. We're a handful of random Esperantists on a forum. What we think doesn't carry any weight balanced against millions of people who've probably never heard of us.

Patrino is the word for mother. It isn't sexist. It just means mother. Yes, it was derived from the word patro. That derivation doesn't actually mean anything at all, hierarchically. Being derived from something doesn't inherently make a word "worse" than the thing it was derived from. It doesn't make it better, either. It doesn't make it *anything* except related, which the two words are.

But, if you'd rather use "matro" (for example, although I'm sure there are gazillions of other necessary changes to the language to eliminate sexism), go right ahead. Everyone else will probably continue to use the Esperanto word, though, clear up until someone (maybe even *you*) convinces the multiple millions of Esperanto speakers worldwide to throw away the word they've always used and use yours instead.

Good luck with that.

@RiotNrrd : well said!

You may try IDO language, kiu uzas, se mi bone scias, la vorton matro, kaj sentas sin ĝenerale kiel pli moderna varianto de Esperanto. Se mi kredas, ke estas nur unu idisto po dekmil (aŭ eĉ pli) Esperantistoj.

thyrolf:You may try IDO language, kiu uzas, se mi bone scias, la vorton matro, kaj sentas sin ĝenerale kiel pli moderna varianto de Esperanto. Se mi kredas, ke estas nur unu idisto po dekmil (aŭ eĉ pli) Esperantistoj.

There are less than 5000 Ido speakers, and they are, according to my research (I may be wrong), particularly Europeans and Americans (amerikanoj, not only usonanoj).

According to my expectations, there are more than 100 000 people who have a really good level in Esperanto, and 2 millions who have a correct level.

Zam_franca:@RiotNrrd : well said!

That's basically my entire philosophy about change proposals for Esperanto now:

You don't have to convince ME. You have to convince everybody ELSE first. Once you do that, then I will gladly join you.

Saves a lot of time "debating the merits", since - whatever it is - it very likely isn't going to happen (and if it DOES happen and everyone is using it... then it's really been a change). Esperanto is spoken by millions of people. I mean, already. Right now. Changing the minds of some insignificant percentage of them about some usage isn't going to make a tiny bit of difference if those same people want to talk to anyone else, and the inertial weight of those many millions is why things won't change. Esperanto is past the "project" stage, and its form is no longer up for debate, unless by "debate" you mean blowing a lot of hot air.

That's not because I said so. That's because millions of people already speak it a certain way, and once something like that happens, making them suddenly speak a different way is... very, very hard. Even *communicating* a change to everybody would be nearly impossible. There's no centralized authority - even la Akademio doesn't really fulfill that role. There's nowhere to "check in" for the current state of the language this week. Changes just don't propagate.

You don't have to convince ME. You have to convince everybody ELSE first. Once you do that, then I will gladly join you.

I will certainly always speak academic Esperanto. If Academy decided to create a new affix, like "-iv-", I would use it. It already exists but it is not official.
I do use words like "mojosa", but there are not grammatical controversies about them, as far as I know. And not only the "pro-Rusio" websites (such as Duolingo) are teaching them, the "pro-Rusujo" (I'm referring to Anna Lowenstein's book) ones like lernu also teach them. I am "pro-Rusujo".

Esperanto is past the "project" stage, and its form is no longer up for debate, unless by "debate" you mean blowing a lot of hot air.

This is true.

Zam_franca:I will certainly always speak academic Esperanto. If Academy decided to create a new affix, like "-iv-", I would use it. It already exists but it is not official.

There's sort of a Catch-22 here, in that the only way the Academy would create a new affix is if the majority of Esperantists were already actively using it. The Academy is, I think, primarily a reactive organization, and generally tries to keep within the realms of "common usage", however they choose to define that. Changes (I think) occur first out in the world, then are documented by the Academy.

Because changes to the language do occur. I don't want to give the impression that that never happens. Komputilo vs komputero (if I recall correctly; my brain keeps throwing "komputeko" in there too, for some reason, and I haven't bothered to track the history down properly here): the Academy recommended one usage, everybody in the world decided on another, and the Academy changed their opinion to reflect how it was actually being used. But I don't think that was a directed change. No one was leading the charge, so to speak. It "just happened", in some sense. And I think that's how changes actually occur. Organically, in response to a general change in peoples needs\attitudes\beliefs\philosophies\etc. on a fairly large\widespread scale. Mojosa is a good example of that. I wasn't terribly keen on it at first - it's literal derivation doesn't really seem very reflective of its meaning - but I do feel Esperanto does kind of need a word like it, so, what the heck, why not use it? Which I even have done. Besides, "kulo" sounds stupid and also has another completely unrelated meaning already assigned to it. Mojosa works just fine.

Like I said, I just don't think changes like that can be directed. I don't think there's really anyone flying the "mojosa" flag, for example. There's no "mojosa champion" out there constantly banging the mojosa drum. It just fits into a place that people find useful, and will likely soon be an official part of the language because of that fact, if it isn't already.