What should be the unchangeable hardcore of Esperanto? Don’t you feel that accommodating the language to the preferences and trends of the users it will be soon plagued of irregularities? Does eliminating the suffix -in- would make it less sexist or just less regular? Isn’t better to admit that Esperanto is a sexist language (Like all the romance language, for example) and move on?

Well, um, I would have to say I'd always use -in- because in Spanish, it is always used, and I thought it made a lot of sense to say gender.

Mendacapote:What should be the unchangeable hardcore of Esperanto? Don’t you feel that accommodating the language to the preferences and trends of the users it will be soon plagued of irregularities? Does eliminating the suffix -in- would make it less sexist or just less regular? Isn’t better to admit that Esperanto is a sexist language (Like all the romance language, for example) and move on?

Some people would argue that Esperanto should have as little sexism as possible, within the bounds of the Fundamento. I don't personally view it as an irregularity, so long as we don't change the meanings of words like patro/patrino. People reading old texts will still read -in- and know what it means.

And honestly, even in modern usage, even among avid -in- users, I think that they are leaning in this direction, perhaps more than they realize. If you assume that a word without an -in- ending is male, by default, then you need to add a *lot* of ge- prefixes to indicate both genders being spoken of, whenever talking about groups. I don't see such widespread ge- usage as I would expect to see if these people wanted to be fully classical in their speech.

This forum has been through this before but my opinion is that it doesn't usually matter when talking about teachers (for example) whether they are male or female, so I don't see a point in screaming out "female!" every time I discuss a female teacher, no more than I would make a special point of mentioning the teacher's skin or hair color (unless it was truly relevant to whatever I was saying).

Esperanto evolves just like other languages. If Esperanto speakers choose to allow it to go in this direction, and don't go against the Fundamento, I don't have a problem with it. But as I said before, I think each Esperanto speaker should make themselves knowledgeable about the situation and make their own decision about how they want to speak. And not to be judgmental about other speakers who may have made the opposite choice!

Mendacapote:What should be the unchangeable hardcore of Esperanto?

The unchanging core is the "Fundamento de Esperanto". You can do a search and read the whole thing online, if you want. It provides the basis for Esperanto, but beyond that, Zamenhof basically gave the language over to the speakers to do what they want with.

Basically it means that the things in the Fundamento must always remain valid, even if you decide to add meanings. So, for example, if we wanted to change the -in- meaning to mean "red-haired" (instruistino = red-haired teacher), that would be ok, but in that case, -in- would have to mean *both* "female" and "red-haired".

One has to find a balance between evolution and stability. As Erinja notes, Zamenhoff set down the fundamento with the rule that it must always be true. Anything that violates the fundamento is not esperanto.

Even beyond that, Esperanto has remained remarkably stable over the years. Keep in mind that the main purpose of Esperanto is to be an easily learned language that will facilitate international communication. The esperanto community recognizes that if any changes are made that violate that, the language will suffer. Thus you see that many of the proposed reforms over the years have been soundly rejected.

But still, Real languages grow and evolve, and Esperanto is no exception to that rule.

Keep in mind, nothing has happened to eliminate the -in suffix. It still exists, and it still marks the root word as explicitly feminine. The difference is in its interpretation and use. In old timey esperanto (which existed before women had the right to vote in much of the western world) the -in suffix was used just about whenever the person referred to was a woman. Sally estas instruistino,
Ruth estas advokatino, ktp.

But as people's attitudes about gender equality have evolved over the years, so has the use of the -in suffix in Eo. Before, it was used matter-of-fact-ly whenever you were talking about a woman. Now, it tends to be used only when you are emphasizing that you are talking about a female. Teri estas verkisto = Terry is a writer. That works fine regardless of whether Terry is a man or a woman. But if you want to emphasize that you're talking about a woman, you could say Teri estas verkistino = Terry is a woman writer. It's not that the meaning of -in has changed, that is fixed by the fundamento. However, its use certainly is evolving.

Here's another example of how Esperanto has evolved. In classical esperanto, it it is very rare to see an affix used as an independent word. Nowadays, it's common.

So, using the -in suffix I could say verkistino or I could say ina verkisto.

or, using the -et suffix, I could say dometo (little house) or I could say eta domo (little house).

Nothing about that violates the fundamento. It's simply a stylistic usage that has evolved over the years. And incidentally it seems to me that eta has become more common than malgranda (the original way to say small).

And yes, some of the changes are a bit sloppy (in my opinion). For some people, the ĥ sound is unpleasant sounding. So, often you see that words having the ĥo sound are replaced by the ko sound.

So now we have two words that mean surgeon

the original ĥirurgo and the more modern kirurgo. Since ĥirurgo is in the fundamento, it can't be eliminated. Thus we have two very similar words that mean the same thing.

And not all ĥ words can be changed. ek is an affix meaning sudden beginning (more or less) and eko is a word that means a beginning. Therefore we are stuck with eĥo for echo (since eko is already taken).

There are other examples of how Eo has evolved, but I think you get the idea. Its usage grows and changes and its vocabulary is increased (we have all kinds of new internet terms these days for example). However, it's core remains unchanged.

Mendacapote:What should be the unchangeable hardcore of Esperanto? Don’t you feel that accommodating the language to the preferences and trends of the users it will be soon plagued of irregularities? Does eliminating the suffix -in- would make it less sexist or just less regular? Isn’t better to admit that Esperanto is a sexist language (Like all the romance language, for example) and move on?

I personally like the way Esperanto is spoken nowadays, but somehow regret the trend to avoid the use of the –in- suffix. I don’t totally believe the explanation of the equality and balance of genders, because the majority of Esperanto speakers of national romance languages feel quite comfortable using the –in- suffix, males and females alike. What I think is that those Esperanto speakers whose national languages are not markedly gendered, are misusing the –in- suffix and that tendency is becoming dominant.

You are both right, nevertheless. The language should be loyal only to the 16 basic rules of the “Fundamento”. The –in- suffix could be given the use and meaning the Esperantistoj altogether decide.

Well, you may be correct, and it's impossible to say with certainty. However, if we look at what has happened to english in recent decades, we see a similar phenomenon. When I was a lad, there were firemen. Now, there are firefighters. Policemen and police women became police officers, etc... These changes (still ongoing - change is slow were definitely driven by gender equality issues.

I suspect that the same thing is driving at least part of these changes in Esperanto. Of course, it is, exactly as you say, up to Esperantujo to decide how Eo evolves.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it "gender" in the romance languages is not tied to sexual gender. If I remember right, in spanish beard is a feminine noun and breast is a masculine noun. The "gender" is just a label to indicate two (or sometimes 3) species of noun. They could have called them red, white and blue nouns; the terms masculine and feminine (and neuter) are just labels. Either way though, I find the aspects of Esperanto's evolution to be very interesting.

Mendacapote:I personally like the way Esperanto is spoken nowadays, but somehow regret the trend to avoid the use of the –in- suffix. I don’t totally believe the explanation of the equality and balance of genders, because the majority of Esperanto speakers of national romance languages feel quite comfortable using the –in- suffix, males and females alike. What I think is that those Esperanto speakers whose national languages are not markedly gendered, are misusing the –in- suffix and that tendency is becoming dominant.

You are both right, nevertheless. The language should be loyal only to the 16 basic rules of the “Fundamento”. The –in- suffix could be given the use and meaning the Esperantistoj altogether decide.

awake:Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it "gender" in the romance languages is not tied to sexual gender. If I remember right, in spanish beard is a feminine noun and breast is a masculine noun. The "gender" is just a label to indicate two (or sometimes 3) species of noun. They could have called them red, white and blue nouns; the terms masculine and feminine (and neuter) are just labels. Either way though, I find the aspects of Esperanto's evolution to be very interesting.

Yes, and no.

el lápiz, masculine noun for 'pencil/krajono'
la tienda, feminine noun for 'store/vendejo'

Spanish's gender system took a long time for me to understand. In the above example, sure, they didn't have to be masculine and feminine, they could have been red and white. But look at this:

el profesor, masculine noun for '[male] teacher/instruisto'
la profesora, feminine noun for '[female] teacher/instruistino'

You would never call a 'profesor' a 'profesora'. They definitely could NOT have been called red and white nouns, that's just silly.

Some nouns end in -e, they use the definite/indefinite article to specify gender, (still, you always STATE the gender, if you notice there are two four forums of the: el (masculine singular), la (feminine singular), las (feminine plural), los (masculine plural).)

la cliente ([female] client/klientino)
el cliente ([male] client/kliento)

Hope this helps.

Yes, that’s right, every word in Spanish is "gendered". The articles, nouns and adjectives must correlate in gender, with just few exceptions (La mar o el mar, el calor o la calor, for example). For us the sun is masculine and the moon feminine. Everything has a gender connotation, somehow. But opposite to the trend in de English speaking countries, the feminine sex connotation is being remarked more everyday. For example a female physician was called “médico” (ella es médico), and now it is said médica. Even the word “Presidenta” is new; if you take a look at the DRAE dictionary you will find this curious explanation: “Presidenta: presidente (mujer que preside)”. Isn´t that funny!!! Well, that's why we see the whole topic the other way around.

Take a look at the DRAE dictionary: Now you can also say "Clienta"!!!