Does Esperanto have a gender-neutral pronoun that can be used for humans?

Question

In English, if I don't know the gender of the person I'm referring to, I'm stuck using one of several suboptimal pronoun options. For example, if I want to say:

The lawyer is sick. ___ is going to the doctor this afternoon.

I can fill in the blank with the following, but none are particularly good options:

• "The lawyer" or "That lawyer" (long-winded, repetitive)
• "He or she," "s/he" (ugly)
• "He" (traditionally inclusive of both men and women, but now often considered to be a form of gender bias)
• "They" (quite informal and often not considered correct – originally refers to plural, not singular, noun)

I cannot fill the blank with it, because the lawyer is a person, not an object or animal (no lawyer jokes please).

In Esperanto, is there a third-person gender-neutral pronoun that can go in the blank? If so, are there any limitations on its use in these sorts of situations?

Answer 1

In his Lingva Respondo called "Pri pronomo por «homo»", Zamenhof explicitly said that "ĝi" can be used as a gender-neutral pronoun. However, he also acknowledged the problem that "ĝi" can sound degrading when used for humans, as it is usually used only for objects and sometimes for children.

Already in the 1970s, the proposal to use "ri" as a gender-neutral pronoun was made, and in the last ten years this proposal has significantly entered actual usage, especially among young Esperanto speakers in Western countries. Given the problem with "ĝi" mentioned above, I think that this addition to the traditional pronoun system of Esperanto can be justified.

See my article Esperanto kaj sekso for a detailed discussion of the pros and cons of "ri", "ĝi" and other proposed solutions for this problem. (The article also covers in depth the question of what gender information is implied by different words, such as "patro" (clearly male in both traditional Esperanto and normal modern usage) and "instruisto" (traditionally often interpreted as male when used in the singular, but now often gender-neutral).)

Answer 2

Sadly, like English, Esperanto has several solutions, none of which are entirely satisfactory.

According to PMEG, li essentially has two meanings: one is used to refer to a male person when the sex is known and the other is to refer generally to a person when the sex is unknown. So in theory in this case you should use li, and that is apparently the recommended usage by Zamenhof. However this usage feels uncomfortable to many speakers because it appears as if it excludes the possibility of the person being a woman, even if that is not the intention.

Alternative solutions without breaking the Fundamento could be to just explicitly say li aŭ ŝi or even tiu, but neither of these sound very natural and they can quickly make a text sound very repetitive if they are used a lot.

There is a proposal to introduce a gender-neutral pronoun ri. However, this is tied to a larger reform called riismo which also introduces other concepts such as the suffix -iĉ- and making many familial nouns neutral. I think riismo is widely known so you would likely be understood if you used ri in this situation, but perhaps people would then assume you are using the entirety of riismo and may be confused.

There are some attempts to introduce the pronoun ŝli exactly for this situation. However, it is less well-known than ri and many people may think you have simply mispronounced or mistyped ŝi and then assume the person is known to be a woman.

Answer 3

Looking in related languages

In natural languages such as English the problem is usually that not just does the language itself not have an elegant way of dealing with the problem, but there are also no dialects or other closely related languages that have a solution ready for borrowing.

With Esperanto the situation is similar but not quite the same. This problem with Esperanto's pronouns is just one among several that were addressed with Ido. As a result, a lot of Ido pronouns (all other than first and second plural) are different from those of Esperanto. Nevertheless, I think the Ido third person pan-gender pronoun lu is arguably the natural choice for Esperanto.

Apart from a general desire to keep Esperanto 'pure', even if that means protecting its most sexist 19th century features against reforms, I can see some good arguments against the use of lu, though:

• Lu doesn't fit into Esperanto's system of all personal pronouns ending in i. (This feature was intentionally changed by Ido to make the personal pronouns easier to distinguish.)
• Esperanto has a verb lui (to hire) that is of course in no way related to lu. It appears that in Ido the corresponding verb is lugar rather than luar to make absolutely sure that this cannot lead to confusion. But in Esperanto one could theoretically be misled into mis-hearing lu as luo and trying to come up with a meaning for it as a noun. (Luo is not a dictionary word, but also not unlikely as a derivation of lui. There is also the Esperanto name lo of the letter L, but I think that's less likely to be a problem.)

Nevertheless, in the sense that Ido is really just a dialect of Esperanto (I believe there are even books and plays that make use of this), Esperanto can be said to already 'have' this pronoun.

Inventing a new solution in the original spirit

One could also think of adding one that is more in the original spirit. Unfortunately I don't know any language with a gender-neutral third person singular pronoun ending in i. If we want to stick with one consonant letter plus one vowel, this leaves us a choice between bi, di, fi, gi, hi, ji, pi, ri, ti, zi, ĥi, ĵi. I think we can eliminate some of these as they are hard to pronounce, hard to distinguish from existing personal pronouns, or misleadingly close to certain pronouns or offensive words in well known languages. I would argue this leaves at most bi, di, gi, ri. I find none of them really convincing. [I changed my mind. See PS below.]

However, as I found out after writing the above paragraph, there is already a proposed Esperanto reform that would make ri a gender-neutral third person pronoun. See Wikipedia on 'riismo' for details.

Accelerating natural language change

Another option would be to just say li/ŝi quickly. Even spelled li-ŝi, this would easily be understood, and I think it would fit into Esperanto's system of pronouns. (I think it's better this way than the opposite order ŝi-li, as that would be more likely to raise ideas of something related to chili or Chile said by a new Esperanto speaker who sometimes uses incorrect nouns not ending in o.) This solution, also, is in a sense already present in Esperanto.

(Disclaimer: I know a lot about languages and have read some books and articles about Esperanto. But I am just learning to speak the language right now, so I can say nothing about how this problem is handled in practice. Basically I am just trying to bring up a few points that in my opinion are likely to play a role.)

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PS: There is an extensive Wikipedia article on the problem of a seksneŭtrala homa triapersona pronomo. It contains some additional ideas that I find quite convincing: (1) Geli is arguably already an Esperanto word fit for the purpose. (2) Gi can be interpreted as either a simplification of geli or a variant of ĝi, which some people (quite logically but perhaps not very politely) already use for the same purpose. Or one could even think of the prefix ge- as derived from a gender-neutral pronoun gi, in the same way that we may say "he-cat" or "she-cat" in English. So gi seems to be an excellent fit.

Answer 4

In the Gramatiko of the Fundamento de Esperanto, we read that ĝi is suitable for animals or things:

(fr) il, elle, pour les animaux ou les choses
(de) es; von Thieren oder Sachen
(ru) оно; о вещи или о животномъ
(pl) ono; o rzeczy lub zwierzęciu

On the other hand, it is worth noting that still in the Fundamento itself, namely in the Ekzercaro, § 16, we find the following sentence:

La infano ploras, ĉar ĝi volas manĝi.

So despite the plain and unambiguous description of ĝi in its Gramatiko, the Fundamento de Esperanto provides a clear example of exeptional usage of such pronoun for a person of unspecified gender.

Answer 5

Some people use „ŝli“ (yes, without a slash) or „li aŭ ŝi“/„ŝi aŭ li“ (which you described as ugly).