As I've understood from Wiktionary's page on 'ili', it comes from French 'ils' which is a masculine plural pronoun and it comes from Vulgar Latin 'illi' which is also a masculine plural pronoun.

My question is that if the process of Esperanto usage was enough to suppress the original masculine connotation of this pronoun or it will never be totally neutral because of it.

iamporcelli:As I've understood from Wiktionary's page on 'ili', it comes from French 'ils' which is a masculine plural pronoun and it comes from Vulgar Latin 'illi' which is also a masculine plural pronoun.

My question is that if the process of Esperanto usage was enough to suppress the original masculine connotation of this pronoun or it will never be totally neutral because of it.

Yes, it is neutral. The etymology doesn't matter. The very meaning of this word matters.
For instance, the root "hero-" is neutral (even if we generally don't use "vir-" to talk about a male "hero-o"), but in fact it doesn't come from the English "hero" or the French "héros", it comes from the English "heroine" and the French "héroïne".
Just look at this: French "héros", Esperanto "heroo" ( a strange combination of 2 "o").
French "héroïne[/b/b]]", Esperanto "heroino".
"heroino" is closer to the etymological French /English word than "heroo"! However, is this root a female one? No, it's neutral.

Zam_franca:

iamporcelli:As I've understood from Wiktionary's page on 'ili', it comes from French 'ils' which is a masculine plural pronoun and it comes from Vulgar Latin 'illi' which is also a masculine plural pronoun.

My question is that if the process of Esperanto usage was enough to suppress the original masculine connotation of this pronoun or it will never be totally neutral because of it.

Yes, it is neutral. The etymology doesn't matter. The very meaning of this word matters.
For instance, the root "hero-" is neutral (even if we generally don't use "vir-" to talk about a male "hero-o"), but in fact it doesn't come from the English "hero" or the French "héros", it comes from the English "heroine" and the French "héroïne".
Just look at this: French "héros", Esperanto "heroo" ( a strange combination of 2 "o").
French "héroïne[/b/b]]", Esperanto "heroino".
"heroino" is closer to the etymological French /English word than "heroo"! However, is this root a female one? No, it's neutral.

Actually the English word hero is gender-neutral. We can suppose that the Esperanto root hero has come from that English word. The morpheme -o just means that this word is a noun.

iamporcelli:As I've understood from Wiktionary's page on 'ili', it comes from French 'ils' which is a masculine plural pronoun and it comes from Vulgar Latin 'illi' which is also a masculine plural pronoun.

My question is that if the process of Esperanto usage was enough to suppress the original masculine connotation of this pronoun or it will never be totally neutral because of it.

Doubtlessly the plural third person pronoun ili is gender-neutral.

Jxusteno:

Zam_franca:

iamporcelli:As I've understood from Wiktionary's page on 'ili', it comes from French 'ils' which is a masculine plural pronoun and it comes from Vulgar Latin 'illi' which is also a masculine plural pronoun.

My question is that if the process of Esperanto usage was enough to suppress the original masculine connotation of this pronoun or it will never be totally neutral because of it.

Yes, it is neutral. The etymology doesn't matter. The very meaning of this word matters.
For instance, the root "hero-" is neutral (even if we generally don't use "vir-" to talk about a male "hero-o"), but in fact it doesn't come from the English "hero" or the French "héros", it comes from the English "heroine" and the French "héroïne".
Just look at this: French "héros", Esperanto "heroo" ( a strange combination of 2 "o").
French "héroïne[/b/b]]", Esperanto "heroino".
"heroino" is closer to the etymological French /English word than "heroo"! However, is this root a female one? No, it's neutral.

Actually the English word hero is gender-neutral. We can suppose that the Esperanto root hero has come from that English word. The morpheme -o just means that this word is a noun.

What I meant is that even if a word looks like another one from another language, it does not mean that it has the same gender.

Following the same argumentation as OP, one could wonder if homo ( < homo, -inis, m) and persono ( < persona, -ae, f) will never be truly neutral... or "ŝtrumpo" ( < Strumpf, m) or "ŝraŭbo" ( < Schraube, f).

iamporcelli:As I've understood from Wiktionary's page on 'ili', it comes from French 'ils' which is a masculine plural pronoun and it comes from Vulgar Latin 'illi' which is also a masculine plural pronoun.

My question is that if the process of Esperanto usage was enough to suppress the original masculine connotation of this pronoun or it will never be totally neutral because of it.

About this subject, the most important thing is to understand that, as any other first world stupid problem, the way to decide what things are neutral/neuter/whatever-goodist-thing is absolutely random. People who claims to be Esperanto speakers (but they aren't) and randomly complaints a lot about this kind of things, don't realize or rather don't want to realize, that Esperanto is plenty of words with a, from your point of view, not neutral or neuter origin because the language itself hasn't it. That's why, if they were coherent, they shouldn't have learned Esperanto in the first place.

In the real world your question has not point at all. Esperanto is Esperanto, French is French.

Ĝis, Novatago (blogo / 7 + 1)

In the real world your question has not point at all. Esperanto is Esperanto, French is French

Keeping only this part of your message would be IMO the most eloquent thing to do...because it's the only part of your message that answers his question ( that was not that bad).

Zam_franca:

In the real world your question has not point at all. Esperanto is Esperanto, French is French

Keeping only this part of your message would be IMO the most eloquent thing to do...because it's the only part of your message that answers his question ( that was not that bad).

Well, actually in our last discussion I realized that context and to try to understand reasonably what the other one says, for you is not very important. So... not that bad...

"Ili" venas de la angla "They" , kiu estas tradukita en la francan "ils" aŭ "elles".
Zamenhofo volis la maksimuman simplecon de la lingvo, samtempe ol maksimume de reguleco kaj klareco. Estis necesaj kompromisoj inter ĉi tiuj tri objektivoj. En ĉi tiu ekzamplo la klareco venas post la simpleco kiel en la angla. . Kelkaj diras domaĝe.