Gender in Esperanto: male roots, -in- and vir-

Esperanto has no grammatical gender: one article, no agreement, and most nouns are neutral. What it has is a short list of male roots, the suffix -in- to make the female, and the prefix ge- for both sexes together. Around that sits a live debate about ri and -iĉ-.

No grammatical gender

There are no masculine and feminine nouns, and adjectives do not change for sex. The article is always la:

• la bona kuracisto - the good doctor (of any sex)
• la bona knabino - the good girl
• la granda domo - the big house

A French or German learner spends years on noun gender. An Esperanto learner spends an afternoon on a word list, and -in- never spreads to the rest of the sentence: la bela knabino, never belina.

Neutral roots and male roots

Most roots are sex-neutral. PMEG says the neutral group is sendube la plej granda, without doubt the largest. It holds homo, persono and infano, and the profession nouns.

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1. 1kuracisto
2. 2instruisto
3. 3kuiristo

A doctor (here a woman), a teacher and a cook (here men): kuracisto, instruisto, kuiristo. Profession nouns say nothing about sex.

• Ŝi estas kuracisto. - She is a doctor.
• Li estas kuracisto. - He is a doctor.

A short list of roots is male. PMEG calls this group much smaller and pli fermita, more closed, and ends each group with k.a., and others:

The trap is assuming the list is longer: amiko and studento are not on it. A handful of roots are female in themselves (damo, a lady), and they take no -in-.

-in- and vir-

-In- makes the female of a male root. One suffix, no exceptions, no change to the root:

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1. 1avino
2. 2avo
3. 3patrino
4. 4patro
5. 5onklo
6. 6fratino
7. 7frato

avino, avo: grandmother, grandfather; patrino, patro: mother, father; onklo: uncle; fratino, frato: sister, brother.

-In- can also specify the female of a neutral root. PMEG calls this optional, though traditionally speakers add it routinely when they mean a woman or a female animal:

• bovino - a cow (bovo, a bovine of either sex)
• hundino - a female dog
• kuracistino - a woman doctor (correct, and says more than kuracisto)

Going the other way, the root vir- in front marks a male:

• virbovo - a bull
• virhundo - a male dog

-In- is also a word, as most affixes are: ino is a female, ina is female as an adjective.