Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

jaidedctrl OP wrote

As for gender in Esperanto, I'd recommend using -iĉo for masculine and -ino for feminine nouns. With -iĉo & -ino, every otherwise defaulting-masuline noun is gender-neutral unless otherwise specified.
Oh, also, using ĝi as a gender-neutral pronoun. It might seem a bit weird, since ĝi usually translates directly to English as "it," but Zamenhoff intended it to be used as either "it" or as the gender-neutral pronoun. I don't see people use it like that often, though :s
I think Duolingo'll call you dumb if you use either of those, but most Esperantists would understand you just fine.

5

F3nd0 wrote

As for gender in Esperanto, I'd recommend using -iĉo for masculine and -ino for feminine nouns. With -iĉo & -ino, every otherwise defaulting-masuline noun is gender-neutral unless otherwise specified.

I strongly advise against this. There's no essential problem with using “-iĉo” to mark male gender, but changing the basic meaning of words defined in the Fundamento needs to be avoided. Instead of doing that, we could have either a new affix which neutralizes the gender, or add new, gender-neutral roots to the existing masculine ones. (Forming new roots by attaching a suffix to the existing ones could work, too.)

Using “ĝi”, on the other hand, is entirely correct and I recommend it as well.

1