Esperanto needs a change
Hello, boys and girls! As you probably know, I am a huge fan of the international language Esperanto. I have been learning it on-and-off since 2021, indulging into its history and culture.
Esperanto is a very notable conlang, thought to be the most widely spoken in the world; paving the way for the birth of other conlangs. Most notably, Toki Pona!
Though I wouldn’t call myself fluent, I like to think that I have a somewhat of a good grasp of the language and its rules. And this is why I have no remorse in saying that Esperanto, besides all of its merits, is an outdated relic of 1887.
Mi petas, nur aŭskultu min.
As much of a fan as I am, I have a lot of grievances with this language. Let’s start with one of my biggest, grammatical gender. Take a look at the word for parent, patro:
- patro (father) -> patrino (mother) / gepatro (parent)
Notice how the purest form of the noun is automatically masculine, rather than neutral. The feminine version of the word is just the masculine version with an -in suffix added in. Yikes!
It gets worse when you realize that even neutrality is defined explicitly. In Esperanto, gender neutrality is defined by appending the prefix ge- to the root. In this case, gepatro (parent).
While this was probably not meant as a patriarchal statement, it’s definitely a relic of its time. Many romance languages fall into the same trap, Spanish being a notable example, where masculine doubles as neutral.
There are exceptions, of course. Akademio de Esperanto is still up and running, normalizing and making changes to the language up to this day. In response to the gender disaster of Esperanto, they have decided to make one exception: professions.
In modern Esperanto, professions are gender neutral by default. Yes, this renders the gender neutral ge- prefix useless for such words. So, for professions, gender looks more like this:
- instruisto (teacher) -> instruistino (female teacher) -> vira instruisto (male teacher)
Eeyikes! Did you see that? In order to explicitly state the masculinity of a profession, you now need to make use of an adjective (vira, which roughly translates to male-like). This is inconsistent with how the language handles feminine nouns!
The community has proposed some solutions for this, for example:
- The -ĉo Suffix (The Corist System): You swap -ino for -ĉo to mean male. So, patro (parent) becomes patrĉo or patroĉo (dad), and amiko (friend) can have an explicit male counterpart like amikĉo. Technically speaking, -ĉo isn’t strictly male, but an affectionate form of it; for example: patro means father, but paĉjo sits closer to dad or daddy. I personally really dislike this one because it feels clunky in verbal speech, and isn’t a fully neutral form of male.
- The -iĉ Proposal (My Favorite): If you’ve spent any time in deep Esperanto circles, you’ve probably heard of riism, the progressive wing of Esperanto grammar trying to fix the language’s baked-in male default; and with it, the iĉ suffix system. Instead of treating the root as male-default (like older European languages) or neutral, the
iĉ-system proposes wiping default gender entirely: -igulo or -iĉo becomes the explicit male suffix, while -ino remains female, leaving the base root truly neutral. It’s heavily debated because it rewrites the Fundamento (I’ll get into this in a bit), but a lot of modern speakers such as I use it.
No one in their right mind would ever realistically use approaches like the former. The riism approach is the only one that really makes sense given the rules of the language.
It’s honestly a dream, to live in a world where patro simply means parent, father is patriĉo and mother is patrino. Unfortunately, things aren’t that easy here in the Esperanto community. Because of the rules established in Fundamento.
Fundamento de Esperanto (or just Fundamento) is a book by the creator of Esperanto, L. L. Zamenhof, in which he explains the basic grammar rules and vocabulary that constitute the basis of the language.
It was made the only obligatory authority over the language by the Declaration of Boulogne at the first World Esperanto Congress. Much of the content of the book is a reproduction of content from Zamenhof’s earlier works, particularly Unua Libro.
The only basis of the Esperanto language binding on all Esperantists, which no one has the right to change, is the little work Foundation of Esperanto. If anyone deviates from the rules and models given in the said work, he can never justify himself with the words “thus desires or advises the author of Esperanto”. Each Esperantist has the right to express any idea, which cannot be conveniently expressed by the material found in the Foundation of Esperanto, in such a manner as he finds most correct, as is done in every other language. However, for the unity of the language for all Esperantists it is recommended to imitate as much as possible the style that is found in the works of the creator of Esperanto, who has worked the most for and in Esperanto and knows best its spirit.
The very foundation of Esperanto, Fundamento, heavily disencourages change. Zamenhof thought the Fundamento should work as a sort of constitution. Immutable, with only few mechanisms for amendment for a centralized foundation.
Some time from now, when many of the new words have completely stabilized, some authoritative institution shall put them into an official dictionary, as ‘Additions to the Fundamento’.
According to his own words, this was to avoid the language from devolving into an “anarchy”. While there are real benefits to the stability of Esperanto, this keeps a language meant to be a bridge artifically stuck with ideas and assumptions from 1887, back when it was made.
Now, I understand that changes to the Fundamento are morally dubious. Zamenhof himself said we can’t carry his name or legacy say we decide to amend it. Still, I’d like to present my personal point of view:
I feel nothing but a deep sense of admiration for Zamenhof, what he believed and what he has done, as does any other Esperantist. Still, I think his ideas on the evolution (or lack thereof) of the language were misguided at best.
Something as natural as the evolution of our tongue is a moral dilemma now, but it shouldn’t be! We need change, but we can’t carry out that change without dishonoring Zamenhof and his legacy.
The world transforms, so do the needs of the people. It is important for a language such as Esperanto to have a stable, centralized set of rules and guidelines, and this is something Fundamento got right. But refusing evolution does little more than setting up the language to artifically die out.
The nature of gender is but one example of how this language has become a relic of the past. In the real world, languages change based on the trends and needs of society, believing that a language designed almost two centuries ago would hold itself up in our rapidly changing world was hopeful (pun intended) at best.
And this is not just theoretical, the demographics for Esperanto speakers in our current generation are already bleak at best. On average, offline, active speakers of the language are around 49 to 50 years old. Young people are simply not interested in our language!
Esperanto spaces are dominantly male, with a whopping ratio of 70-80% men compared to women and gender-nonconforming individuals, with the latter being barely even present. This lack of diversity is very concerning.
These stats have been kindly provided by libera folio
The two stats paint a very grim picture: though Esperanto is supposedly spoken by 2 million people worldwide (which is a highly debatable stat), most of them are cis men in their fifties.
This contrasts with, say, the Toki Pona community, which is amazingly balanced out between male, female and gender-nonconforming individuals. Also has a shockingly younger demographic, mostly made up by teenagers.
We, however, do not have enough young esperantists. And I think the reason for this is that Toki was able to move with the modern world, while Esperanto stayed stuck in the past.
I think we should listen to everything Zamenhof has said and respect his desires to the best of our abilities, but I also think that Esperanto and its community are approaching a tipping point. Akademio de Esperanto is not going to make any meaningful change to modernize the language, and the community moves slowly at best.
We need to accept the possibility that Esperanto is losing relevance, and that this is only going to get worse with the passing of time.
But that’s just the way I see it. I’d love to hear from you! Do you think we should amend the Fundamento, or keep following its rules like we always have?
Oh, yeah! Before I go, I may release two blog posts soon. No promises!
Published on 2026-07-29