Riism
Encyclopedia
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 proposed word or usage is not grammatically correct according to the standard rules of Esperanto grammar, it will be marked with an asterisk.
other than in the two personal pronouns li "he" and ŝi "she". Nevertheless, gender is often a fuzzy issue. In practical usage words formed with the suffix -ul "person" are ambiguous, sometimes used with a masculine meaning in the singular, but generally neuter in the plural. However, concepts of gender have changed over time, and many words that were once considered masculine are now neutral, especially words related to professions and animals. 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". However, this can be confusing to those who are not familiar with that saying, as the word koko has become more neuter over time.
In modern usage, most noun roots are lexically neuter, a couple dozen 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 singular neuter 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". However, it is more common to simply say unu el la gepatroj "one of the parents" or patro aŭ patrino "mother or father".
The most common roots that are masculine unless specifically marked as feminine are:
Gender-neutral roots such as leono "lion" and kelnero "waiter" may be made feminine with a grammatical suffix (leonino "lioness", kelnerino "waitress"), but there is no comparable way to derive the masculine; there was not even originally a word for "male". Words without a feminine suffix may take a masculine reading, especially in the case of people and domestic animals; koko, for example, means "chicken", but is read as masculine in koko kaj kokino "rooster and hen". Zamenhof used the nominal root vir "man, human male" to make words for animals masculine. Originally this took the form of a suffix -viro, but in response to criticisms that the resulting words such as bovoviro "bull" were ambiguous with mythological man–animal hybrids such as cherub
s (also bovoviro), Zamenhof switched to using vir as a prefix in his translation of Genesis in the 1920s. This usage has spread, and vir- is now widely used as a prefix in the case of animals (virleono "male-lion", virhomo "male-human"), but as a separate adjective vira for professionsWennergren, Bertilo Wennergren. "Afiksecaj radikoj kaj kunmetaĵoj." PMEG. 08 Mar 2008. Web. 11 Feb 2010.. (vira kelnero "male waiter"), with -viro now considered archaic, though neither of these conventions is as common as feminine -ino. Moreover, the prefix vir- is idiomatic, as virbovo (man-bovine) could still mean either "bull" or "minotaur/cherub"; it is only by convention that it is generally understood to mean "bull", and writers have coined words such as taŭro "bull" to bypass the issue.
.
Reforms tend to center around a few key areas:
Three specific proposals surface 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.
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 in the mid twentieth century. This doesn't affect all words: Nouns that never changed gender to begin with, such as taŭro "bull", do not take gender suffixes in these reforms either. The resulting paradigms are as follows:
Though none of these are widespread, *-iĉo has appeared in books published by Jorge Camacho, Luiz Portella, and Yoshito Usui
.
Proponents of one proposal often claim that a competing proposal is confusing because it resembles an existing 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"; on the other hand, uno would mean not just "a male" but also "the UN
".
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.
Many of these proposals propose that all gender-changing words such as patro become neuter once a masculine suffix is in use, with the only remaining gendered words being those such as taŭro and damo that never changed gender to begin with. However, since viro has numerous masculine uses, and there are already dedicated words for the neutral and feminine equivalents (adolto "adult" or plenkreskulo "grownup", and femino "woman"), viro is also commonly retained as a masculine root.
The word eŭnuko "eunuch" has through back-formation
given rise to the suffix *-uko for castrated people or animals, creating forms such as *bovuko "steer", from bovo "cattle", to replace okso "steer", though eks- "ex-" is sometimes seen in this context: eksvirkato "castrated cat" (lit. "ex-male-cat") vs. *katuko.
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:
It has not been extended in range since then, but advocates 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 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,
the pronoun li cannot easily be substituted with tiu, as that would normally be understood to refer to someone other than the person speaking:
Similar problems of confusion arise with trying to use oni "one" in such situations:
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:
Although not a full solution, as si refers to a previously mentioned 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:
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:
Gi is a popular proposal because it is iconic: in writing, it resembles ĝi, which it also resembles in meaning, and it is 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.
Making li the epicene pronoun is also a common approach, as it is transparently 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 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.
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.
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:
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:
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
that is most frequently targeted for criticism. There are numerous proposals to regularize both grammatical and lexical gender.
In the text below, when a proposed word or usage is not grammatically correct according to the standard rules of Esperanto grammar, it will be marked with an asterisk.
Gender in Esperanto
Esperanto does not have grammatical genderGrammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
other than in the two personal pronouns li "he" and ŝi "she". Nevertheless, gender is often a fuzzy issue. In practical usage words formed with the suffix -ul "person" are ambiguous, sometimes used with a masculine meaning in the singular, but generally neuter in the plural. However, concepts of gender have changed over time, and many words that were once considered masculine are now neutral, especially words related to professions and animals. 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". However, this can be confusing to those who are not familiar with that saying, as the word koko has become more neuter over time.
In modern usage, most noun roots are lexically neuter, a couple dozen 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 singular neuter 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". However, it is more common to simply say unu el la gepatroj "one of the parents" or patro aŭ patrino "mother or father".
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 with a grammatical suffix (leonino "lioness", kelnerino "waitress"), but there is no comparable way to derive the masculine; there was not even originally a word for "male". Words without a feminine suffix may take a masculine reading, especially in the case of people and domestic animals; koko, for example, means "chicken", but is read as masculine in koko kaj kokino "rooster and hen". Zamenhof used the nominal root vir "man, human male" to make words for animals masculine. Originally this took the form of a suffix -viro, but in response to criticisms that the resulting words such as bovoviro "bull" were ambiguous with mythological man–animal hybrids such as cherub
Cherub
A cherub is a type of spiritual being mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and cited later on in the Christian biblical canons, usually associated with the presence of God...
s (also bovoviro), Zamenhof switched to using vir as a prefix in his translation of Genesis in the 1920s. This usage has spread, and vir- is now widely used as a prefix in the case of animals (virleono "male-lion", virhomo "male-human"), but as a separate adjective vira for professionsWennergren, Bertilo Wennergren. "Afiksecaj radikoj kaj kunmetaĵoj." PMEG. 08 Mar 2008. Web. 11 Feb 2010.
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, none of which have been accepted by the Akademio de EsperantoAkademio de Esperanto
The Akademio de Esperanto is an independent body intended to control the evolution of the language Esperanto by keeping it consistent with the fundamental principles thereof. Modelled somewhat after the Académie française, it was proposed by L. L...
.
Reforms tend to center around a few key areas:
- A masculine suffix, parallel to the feminine -ino
- An epicene affix
- An epicene pronoun (he/she)
Three specific proposals surface 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 grammatical suffix was *-uno. *-Olo is also occasionally seen. However, the most popular 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 |
| Masculine |
| *-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 in the mid twentieth century. This doesn't affect all words: Nouns that never changed gender to begin with, such as taŭro "bull", do not take gender suffixes in these reforms either. The resulting paradigms are as follows:
| Standard | Un-proposal | Iĉ-proposal | Transl. | Endearment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Neuter | gepatroj (plural only) | *patro | *patro | "parent" | — |
| Feminine | patrino | patrino | patrino | "mother" | panjo "mama" |
| Masculine | patro | *patruno | *patriĉo | "father" | paĉjo "papa" |
Though none of these are widespread, *-iĉo has appeared in books published by Jorge Camacho, Luiz Portella, and Yoshito Usui
Yoshito Usui
, born in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, was a manga artist known for the popular manga Crayon Shin-chan. He and his wife raised two daughters; both had moved out of the house at the time of Usui's death.-Biography:...
.
Proponents of one proposal often claim that a competing proposal is confusing because it resembles an existing 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"; on the other hand, uno would mean not just "a male" but also "the UN
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
".
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 usage 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 words such as patro become neuter once a masculine suffix is in use, with the only remaining gendered words being those such as taŭro and damo that never changed gender to begin with. However, since viro has numerous masculine uses, and there are already dedicated words for the neutral and feminine equivalents (adolto "adult" or plenkreskulo "grownup", and femino "woman"), viro is also commonly retained as a masculine root.
The word eŭnuko "eunuch" has through back-formation
Back-formation
In etymology, back-formation is the process of creating a new lexeme, usually by removing actual or supposed affixes. The resulting neologism is called a back-formation, a term coined by James Murray in 1889...
given rise to the suffix *-uko for castrated people or animals, creating forms such as *bovuko "steer", from bovo "cattle", to replace okso "steer", though eks- "ex-" is sometimes seen in this context: eksvirkato "castrated cat" (lit. "ex-male-cat") vs. *katuko.
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, and is avoided in conversation and literature. 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), 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
Zamenhof
Zamenhof is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:* Rozalia Zamenhof, née Sofer , mother of Ludwik* Romana Zamenhof , a Jewish Polish female Esperantist and pharmaceutist...
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 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 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
Reflexive pronoun
A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that is preceded by the noun, adjective, adverb or pronoun to which it refers within the same clause. In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphor that must be bound by its antecedent...
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 to a previously mentioned 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:
- 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
Existing Esperanto personal pronouns end in i, and only only four proposals for a new pronoun are at all common: gi, hi, ri, and the blend ŝli.Gi is a popular proposal because it is iconic: in writing, it resembles ĝi, which it also resembles in meaning, and it is 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.
Making li the epicene pronoun is also a common approach, as it is transparently 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 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 | 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
Function word
Function words are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning, but instead serve to express grammatical relationships with other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker...
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
Kálmán Kalocsay
Kálmán Kalocsay , in Hungarian name order Kalocsay Kálmán is one of the foremost figures in the history of Esperanto literature...
and Gaston Waringhien
Gaston Waringhien
Gaston Waringhein was a French linguist, lexicographer, and Esperantist. He wrote poems as well as essays and books on linguistics...
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 : 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..."
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.