Despite all the differences they have, every single new international auxiliary language (IAL) I know has a feature in common: they are gender neutral.

For instance, Elefen (or Lingua Franca Nova) uses the pronoun el like a singular they. The word for a parent is jenitor, sibling is conaseda and aunt or uncle is tie. And a neutral word like dirijor (director) can be made gendered through the addition of the words mas (male) or fema (female) like a suffix: dirijor fema. For other words, more natural equivalents exist, such as replacing the E of tie for a feminine A in tia or a masculine O in tio. For any conlinguist—someone who dabbles in constructed languages—who wants to make a modern auxiliary language, such a gender neutral design simply makes sense.

More recently came Pandunia. It has le for singular they. Jener is for a parent, saudare for a sibling, and I couldn’t find a word for aunt or uncle. Too bad. The language cares so little about gender (what a surprise!) that its learning sites don’t even show a single example of gender—instead it just mentions that gendered words are added, perhaps man (male) and fem (female) or some derivation of those words. In any case, the learning material makes no fuss over gender, and I think that makes my point.

But what might surprise newcomers is that Ido was already gender neutral… back in 1914. Ido already had lu, its own word for the singular they, a back-formation from the gendered ilu (he), elu (she), and olu (it). A parent used to be patro, a sibling is frato, and an aunt or uncle is onklo. A neutral word like direktisto (director) is made feminine through the suffix -ino and masculine through -ulo: direktistino, direktistulo. When you think of it, 1914 is highly precocious for such a linguistic endeavour, and it was all thanks to the zealously logical Ido community guided by the philosopher, logician, and mathematician Louis Couturat.

Even Interlingua, that took its current form in 1951, keeps some gender in its structure. There is no singular they, even though ille is a convergence of masculine and neutral. One may use parente for a parent, there is no word for sibling, and while there is amita for an aunt and two words for an uncle, oncle and avunculo, there is no gender neutral word for a parent’s sibling. And while words like director are seemingly neutral in today’s day and age, Interlingua still offers strictly feminine words like directrice. Why is it only in language that women have such a privilege!

In addition, it should not be forgotten whence Ido came. Esperanto, whose gender system started in 1887 but did not mature until the early 20th century, is quite probably the most gendered IAL still in use today. The community adopted ri as singular they in the past decades. There is no clear winner for a parent, for a sibling, or for an aunt or uncle, although parento, sahodo, and ontio are among the proposals. It has been a tradition to see words such as amiko (friend) as masculine and amikino as feminine, but I have not see this usage live up to practice. All in all, the etymologically masculine words like patro, frato, and onklo, are still seen as fundamentally masculine in Esperanto, even though we strangely derive the feminine patrino, fratino, and onklino from them, and it will probably stay like that as long as the Fundamento is taken seriously. Time will tell.

Which brings me back to Ido. Even though we do have a fully gender neutral system in practice, something does not make sense from an etymological point of view: why would we use masculine roots to form gender neutral words? Why patro, frato, and onklo instead of matro, soro, tanto, or something etymologically neutral?

In 1929, Ido speakers were facing such an issue: why patro for a parent when we have matro for a mother? That is unbalanced. That is one of the reasons patro became the word for father, we started using matro unapologetically for all meanings of mother, and we adopted genitoro for a parent. One has to remember that in Ido a parent—biological or not— is a genitoro even though in many modern languages such as English and French the cognate has a strictly biological meaning. This remark will be relevant for what’s coming.

I have looked at many words in our language, and so far I have found two typically masculine roots from an etymological perspective: -oro words and certain family names.

I will not make a case for replacing the -oro words, because even the national languages—especially English—have made them gender neutral in most cases. I’m talking about aktoro, autoro, diktatoro, doktoro, genitoro, and the like. They are sufficiently gender neutral in living languages to be interpreted as such.

For the family names, the two remaining culprits are frato, a sibling, and onklo, an aunt or uncle. All of the family names—avo, spozo, kuzo, nevo, etc.— ultimately come from Latin.

The word frato comes from frater, a brother, whose female equivalent is soror. We can obtain soro from it, which is not only analogous to fratello and sorella in Italian, but actually follows the same transformations:

frater, fratr, fratro, frato

soror, sorr, sorro, soro

The word soro is directly supported by French soeur and Italian sorella. The inital S sound is further supported by German Schwester, English sister, and Russian sestrá. Indirectly, soro is found in words such as the English sorority, sororal in the same way frato is found in fraternity and fraternal. Finally, it is slightly easier to pronounce than other possible candidates such as sestro or sesto, for which brudro or brudo would probably be a more fitting male equivalent. As I said, adopting Germanic words would be cool, but they would not fit with all the Latin words for family names.

As for a sibling, I have found germanus in Latin. It is totally unrelated to German. It has descendants in Spanish hermana/o, and a strictly biological meaning in French germain and Italian germana/o—who cares. In none of these languages is the G hard, so it makes perfect sense to use jermano in Ido. Furthermore, it makes it distinct from Germano and follows the etymology jerm-ano. Yes, jermano etymologically means jerm-ano.

The case for aunt and uncle is more complex, because whereas onklo is easily found in German Onkel, English uncle, and French oncle, no female equivalent satisfies me. The Latin word for an aunt is amita, which cannot be easily imported in Ido: amito and amido already exist for something else. The word tanto, analogous to German Tante and French tante, is already taken. The only candidate I have seen fit so far is anto, which looks little like the Latin word, which is supported solely by English, and which lacks the T in German and French. In other words, no feminine word is on par with onklo, and it makes the situation unbalanced.

I was surprised to find a gender neutral word for aunt and uncle so easily. The Greek words theía, theíos, still used in modern Greek, have produced thia, thius in Latin. That is why we have tía, tío in Spanish and zia, zio in Italian. The word tio is free in Ido, unlike in Esperanto, and it is easier to pronounce than cio. From it we can easily derive tiino and tiulo, akin to its Spanish and Italian counterparts. Such a practical word lessens the importance of finding a good female equivalent to onklo: may an uncle be tiulo and an aunt be tiino.

And that is all: *jermano, *frato, *soro, *tio. With just three new roots, Ido can get closer than ever to being fully gender neutral. It is just a glimpse of our language’s future.

Here is me playing with Family Echo, a family tree maker:

Help me make this future come true!

Phil

2020.04.08 First publication. Corrected genders in Elefen.