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Gender asymmetry is one of the aspects of the constructed language Esperanto that is most frequently targeted for criticism. There are numerous proposals to regularize both grammatical and lexical gender. In the text below, when a word is not grammatically correct according to the grammar rules of Esperanto, it will be marked with an asterisk.
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Gender in Esperanto
Esperanto does not have grammatical gender other than in the two personal pronouns li "he" and ŝi "she". Nevertheless, gender is often a fuzzy issue. As a result of language evolution, many words that were once considered masculine are now neutral, especially words related to professions and animals. Amiko "friend" is one such word.
In modern usage, a couple dozen noun roots are lexically masculine, and a smaller number lexically feminine. Most masculine roots may be made feminine through the addition of the suffix -ino, and made to describe a group of both males and females with the addition of ge-. For example, patro means "father", patrino "mother", and gepatroj "parents", but gepatroj cannot be used in the singular *gepatro for "parent". For these gendered words there is no easy way to make the neuter singular equivalent. Often there is a separate root that acts like this, for example knabo "boy" - infano "child", filo "son" - ido "offspring", etc. Some neuter counterparts can be made with word-building. The meaning of "parent" can be achieved with either gener-into "genitor", or ge-patr-ano "member of the parents."
The most common roots that are masculine unless specifically marked as feminine are:
- Kin terms: avo "grandfather", edzo "husband", fianĉo "fiancé", filo "son", frato "brother", nepo "grandson", nevo "nephew", onklo "uncle", patro "father", vidvo "widower", kuzo "(male) cousin"
- Words for boys and men: knabo "boy", viro "man", bubo "brat"
- Titles: fraŭlo "bachelor", grafo "count", princo "prince", reĝo "king", sinjoro "mister, sir"
Gender-neutral roots such as leono "lion" and kelnero "waiter" may be made feminine (leonino "lioness", kelnerino "waitress"), but there is no comparable way to derive the masculine. Often, context can give neutral roots a masculine meaning, as in koko kaj kokino (lit. chicken and hen) "rooster and hen." In practical usage words formed with the suffix -ul "person" are ambiguous, tending to take on a masculine meaning in the singular, and a neuter meaning in the plural. The most common way to emphasize the masculinity of a root involves using the root vir- "male."[1] This manifests in the form of a prefix usually reserved for animals (virleono, lit. "male-lion"), and an adjective generally used for humans[2] (vira kelnero, lit. "male waiter").[3] In older texts it is only context that disambiguates. For example, in the saying al feliĉulo eĉ koko donas ovojn "to a happy man, even a koko gives eggs" (Zamenhof), the word koko means "rooster", not "chicken".[4] However, this can be confusing to those who are not familiar with that saying, as the word koko has become more neuter over time.
Common elements to regularizing Esperanto gender
Some critics feel that deriving feminine from masculine words is sexist, while others are bothered by the lack of symmetry. Such sentiments have sparked numerous attempts at reform.[5]
Reforms tend to center around a few key areas:
- A masculine suffix, parallel to the feminine -ino
- An epicene affix
- A epicene pronoun (he/she)
Three specific remedies recur repeatedly, as they derive from the existing resources of the language. These are the masculine suffix *-iĉo, workarounds and expanded uses of the epicene prefix ge-, and the epicene pronoun *ŝli.
Masculine suffixes
Perhaps the earliest proposal for a masculine suffix was *-uno. *-Olo is also occasionally seen. However, the most common today is *-iĉo.
*-Uno was created through ablaut of -ino. It is, in fact, the only such possibility, as -ano, -eno, and -ono already exist. Similarly, *-olo was created through ablaut of -ulo "person". *-Iĉo was created by analogy with the pet-name suffix -ĉjo, the only masculine suffix in the language, so that the pet names and general gender suffixes are symmetrical:
| Endearment | Gender | |
|---|---|---|
| Feminine | -njo | -ino |
| Masculine | -ĉjo | *-iĉo |
An element common to all such proposals is that the gender-changing nouns are to be reanalyzed as gender neutral when they occur without a gender suffix, as the names of professions and nationalities, such as policano "policeman" → "police officer" and anglo "Englishman" → "English person", did half a century ago. This doesn't affect all words. Nouns that never changed gender to begin with do not take gender suffixes in these reforms either. The resulting paradigms are as follows:
| Standard | U-proposal | Ĉ-proposal | Trans. | Endearment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Neuter | gepatroj (plural only) | *patro | *patro | "parent" | — |
| Feminine | patrino | patrino | patrino | "mother" | panjo "mama" |
| Masculine | patro | *patruno | *patriĉo | "father" | paĉjo "papa" |
Although it's use is not widely spread, there have been a few published books which use *-iĉo.[6]
Advocates of one proposal sometimes[citation needed] claim that the competing proposal is confusing because it resembles another suffix, for example that *patriĉo "father" resembles pejorative patraĉo "a bad father", or that *patruno "father" resembles patrino "mother", but there does not seem to be a problem in actual use: With the word stress on the suffix vowel, -iĉo/-aĉo and -uno/-ino are as distinct as many other pairs of Esperanto suffixes, such as -ilo/-ulo. One specific objection to the -iĉo proposal is that *nepiĉo "grandson" is homophonous with ne piĉo, piĉo being Esperanto slang for "cunt";[7] on the other hand, uno would mean not just "a male" but also "the UN".
Epicene prefixes
Various epicene affixes have also been proposed. They may be proposed instead of a masculine suffix—that is, gender derivation remains as in standard Esperanto, but the language gains a simple way of saying "a parent"—or in addition to a masculine suffix, often to avoid confusion between people speaking reformed and standard Esperanto. The only such affix commonly seen is the prefix ge- In standard Esperanto, ge- means both sexes together, and is normally only seen in the plural. In conversation, however, singular ge- is not uncommonly extended to meanings such as *gepatro "a parent" when a speaker either doesn't know or doesn't wish to reveal the gender of the noun. Many gender-reform proposals would make such speech official.
| Without masculine |
With masculine |
||
|---|---|---|---|
| Neuter | *gepatro | *gepatro | "parent" |
| Feminine | patrino | patrino | "mother" |
| Masculine | patro | *patriĉo | "father" |
People who use *patriĉo for "father" may avoid the bare root patro "*parent" altogether as ambiguous, or may use it and switch to *gepatro only when they need to disambiguate.
Treatment of gendered words
Many of these proposals propose that all gender-changing, except viro "male," words become neuter once a masculine suffix is in use, with the only remaining gendered words being those such as taŭro "bull" and damo "lady" that never changed gender to begin with.
The word eŭnuko "eunuch" has through back-formation given rise to the suffix *-uko for castrated people or animals, creating inherently masculine forms such as *bovuko "steer", from bovo "cattle", to replace okso "steer". Although eks- "ex-" is already jokingly used in this sense: eksvirkato "castrated cat" (lit. "ex-male-cat") vs. *katuko.[8]
Gender-neutral pronouns
As in English, Esperanto has a personal pronoun for "he", li, and "she", ŝi. Paraphrasing li aŭ ŝi "he or she" to avoid mentioning gender is, as in English, considered awkward[who?], and is avoided in conversation and literature[citation needed]. There are two general approaches to resolving this issue: modifying an existing pronoun, and creating a new pronoun.
Extending the range of an existing pronoun
The existing third-person pronouns are li "he" (the pronoun generally used when gender is not known[9]), ŝi "she", ĝi "it", ili "they", oni "one", si (reflexive), tiu "that one".
As discussed in the main article, ĝi is used principally with animals and objects. Zamenhof also prescribed it to be the epicene pronoun for use when the sex of an individual is unknown, or to refer to an epicene noun such as persono (person). However, in his writing it is only used for children:
- La infano ploras, ĉar ĝi volas manĝi "the child is crying, because it wants to eat".
It has not been extended in range since then, but advocates[who?] maintain that the idea that ĝi cannot be used for people in general is due to interference from English. In Zamenhof's day it was customary to specify gender whenever it was known . A shift from li and ŝi to ĝi could be argued[weasel words] to be a stylistic change similar to the ongoing shift from copula-plus-adjective to verb (such as bluas for estas blua), and that nothing so radical as the creation of a new pronoun is required.
However, when gender becomes a problem it is much more common for people to use the demonstrative adjective and pronoun tiu (that one) as a work-around. Unfortunately, this remedy is not always available. For example, in the sentence,
- Iu ĵus diris, ke li malsatas "Someone just said that he is hungry",
the pronoun li cannot easily be substituted with tiu, as that would normally be understood to refer to someone other than the person speaking:
- Iu ĵus diris, ke *tiu malsatas "Someone just said that that person is hungry".
Similar problems of confusion arise with trying to use oni "one" in such situations:
- Iu ĵus diris, ke *oni malsatas "Someone just said that one is hungry".
This could be used to express deference or other forms of indirectness, but would not be understood to refer to the someone who made the statement.
It would be possible to extend the use of reflexive pronoun si, which officially cannot occur in subject position, to that of a logophoric pronoun:
- Iu ĵus diris, ke *si malsatas "Someone just said that himself/herself is hungry".
Although not a full solution, as si refers back to a previous person, this could be used in combination with tiu to introduce a subject. It also has the advantage of clarifying the sentence, since it is ambiguous in standard Esperanto whether li "he" refers to the someone who is speaking, or someone else. However, logophoric pronouns are alien to European languages, and this solution is rare.
Due to English influence, singular "they" has been reported[citation needed]:
- Iu ĵus diris, ke *ili malsatas "Someone just said that they are hungry".
but this messes up Esperanto noun agreement and is not readily accepted by people of other language backgrounds.
A proposal which is totally consistent with regular grammar is to hyphenate li (he) and ŝi (she) to li-ŝi (or ŝi-li), similar to some other constructs in Esperanto, such as pli-malpli (more or less).
Finally, the epicene sense of li can be made explicit with singular ge-, though pronouns do not normally take any affixes apart from grammatical inflections:
- Iu ĵus diris, ke *geli malsatas "Someone just said that s/he is hungry".
New pronouns
 |
This article may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (June 2009) |
If a new pronoun is to have the consonant-i form of existing pronouns, only a few possibilities remain in the language: bi, gi, hi, (ĥi), *ji, ĵi, ri, *ŭi, zi. Of these, *ji and *ŭi violate Esperanto phonotactics, and in any case would be impractical for many people to distinguish from the i- pronouns and vi. In addition, the letter ĥ has become rare, and by many speakers is no longer used at all. Other forms are also potentially problematic: hi would be confounded with the i- pronouns by people who drop their aitches (though they could pronounce it something like ĥi); likewise, ĵi would have a tendency[weasel words] to be confused with or mispronounced as ĝi, and likewise ri with li. Such pronouns might be usable, but the likelihood of confusion would need to be accommodated.
Although several of these have promise—zi has parallels in Dutch, and the similarity between ĵi and ĝi would not be a problem for people who do not distinguish those words in their native languages anyway—only three are at all common: gi, hi, and ri. There is also a not uncommon form ŝli.
Gi is a popular proposal because it is iconic: in writing, it resembles ĝi, which it also resembles in meaning, and it is also similar to the occasionally epicene prefix ge-. This makes it readily recognizable. Also along these lines is the use of the epicene prefix itself, geli.[10]
Making li the epicene pronoun is also a common approach, as it is obviously related to the epicene plural ili "they". Such approaches then diverge in how to treat the masculine. Gender may simply be abandoned, reducing the inventory to li "s/he" and ili "they", or a new masculine pronoun may be created. One proposal is hi "he", so that the gendered pronouns hi and ŝi both derive from English.
A variant of this that was popular for a time in online newsgroups, called riism, modifies li slightly to ri as a signal that the speaker is using gender-neutral pronouns, but then in order to avoid confusion eliminates li and ŝi completely, so that the inventory becomes ri "s/he" and ili "they". The riist "manifesto" also adopts the masculine suffix *-iĉo and the occasional epicene use of ge- to avoid any resulting confusion. Critics[who?] maintain that it is important to retain the option of gendered pronouns, if for no other reason than the translation of much of the world's literature; and that in actual rather than theoretical use, *ri as a pronoun would cause chronic confusion with the many verbs that begin with ri-, such as ri gardas "s/he keeps" vs rigardas "looks", ri petas "s/he asks" vs ripetas "repeats", etc.
Breaking with the single consonant-i form of the pronouns, but instantly recognizable to most Esperantists, is another proposal, ŝli. This is just the reading pronunciation of the abbreviation ŝ/li, the equivalent of English "s/he", and is not infrequently seen in informal writing.
| Official | Ĝiism | Ŝliism | Giism | Geism | Liism | Riism | Hiism | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Epicene | li[11] | ĝi | ŝli | gi | geli | li | ri | li |
| Masculine | li | li | li | li | li | hi | ||
| Feminine | ŝi | ŝi | ŝi | ŝi | ŝi | ŝi | ||
| Neuter | ĝi | ĝi | ĝi | ĝi | ĝi | ĝi | ĝi | ĝi |
| Plural | ili | ili | ili | ili | ili | ili | ili | ili |
The problem with most of these proposals is that it is extremely difficult to add pronouns to a language. Therefore the only ones that are likely to succeed are those such as ĝi or ŝli that use the existing forms of the language.
Gender in plural pronouns
In addition to removing gender from the singular pronouns, proposals have also been made to add gender to the plural in order to better translate material (such as the Bible) that was written in a language that has plural gender.
Due to the symmetry between li "he" and ili "they", the obvious choice is to make ili masculine and to create an analogous feminine form, *iŝi. This was proposed by Kálmán Kalocsay and Gaston Waringhien in the 3rd edition of their Plena Gramatiko de Esperanto (pp 72–73, note 1). They cited the biblical passage Matthew 28:10-11:
- Tiam Jesuo diris al ili (la virinoj): Ne timu; iru, diru al miaj fratoj, ke ili foriru en Galileon, kaj tie ili min vidos. Kaj dum ili iris...
- "Then Jesus said to them [the women], “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee. They will see me there.” While they were going, ..."
It is obvious from context that "They will see me there" refers to the brothers. However, the identity of the "they" in "While they were going" is completely opaque. Kalocsay and Waringhien proposed the following solution:
- Tiam Jesuo diris al *iŝi: Ne timu, iru, diru al miaj fratoj, ke ili foriru en Galileon, kaj tie ili min vidos. Kaj dum *iŝi iris..."
Notes
- ^ According to the dictionaries ReVo, iOREL, BER
- ^ http://bertilow.com/pmeg/vortfarado/afiksoj/afiksecaj_elementoj/radikoj_kunmetajhoj.html#i-asp
- ^ When vir- is used as a prefix it is frequently ambiguous, as for example virbovo (man-bovine) could mean either "bull" or "minotaur", and writers have coined the words taŭro "bull" and minotaŭro "minotaur" to avoid the problem.
- ^ Kalocsay & Waringhien, Plena analiza gramatiko (1985:61)
- ^ [1] (in Italian)
- ^ Examples include:
Georgo Kamaĉo, Sur la linio (1991): Aĉa iĉo (p 8), pozas loze kaj ripoze doktoriĉo zita zorn (p 18);
Luiz Portella, Ŝi estas mia amiko (2005): Jes respondas la iĉo (p 7), ĉu katiĉo ofte vizitas la idojn? (p 31);
Yoshito Usui, Crayon Shin-chan: Juvelo kaj beluliĉo plaĉas al ŝi. - ^ Sources: Sonja, Kisa. "Sonja's English-Esperanto Dictionary". 12-12-08 <http://www.kisa.ca/vortaro/search.php?someaction=search&word=cunt>.
Godivier, X. "Esperanto-English Dictionary". 12-12-08 <http://www.esperanto-panorama.net/vortaro/eoen.htm> - ^ Wennergren, Bertilo. "PMEG - UK". 12-12-08 <http://bertilow.com/pmeg/vortfarado/neoficialaj_afiksoj/sufiksoj/uk.html>
- ^ http://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/pronomoj/tria.html
- ^ Ĉu vi geli-as?
- ^ http://www.reta-vortaro.de/revo/art/li.html#li.0
External links
- The Complete Handbook of Esperanto Grammar—a detailed account of Esperanto lexical gender. In Esperanto.
- The riist manifesto. In Esperanto. (Mirror; the original page went offline in 2006.)
- A critique of riism, supporting -iĉ- but criticizing ri as confusing, and proposing instead the pronoun gi. In English.
- Esperanto Idiosyncrasies : Sexism. Mentions the ri, gi, hi, ĝi, and -iĉ- proposals. In English.
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