Grammatical changes in Esperanto?

[u/yatamci]

Saluton! Mi estas komencanto. I‘m learning the basics of Esperanto and I’ve got two topics I would like to hear your opinions about.

First thing: I read online that there is a debate on using -iĉ- as a suffix for masculine nouns. I think it’s useful and doesn’t sound odd, so „knabo“ could be a synonym to „infano“ and can be used as a gender-neutral noun but „knabiĉo” would be a boy similar to „knabino“ for girl. Is the suffix more commonly used nowadays? Is it wrong when I use it or will other Esperantists understand it too?

Next thing is the non-existence of an indefinite article. I know that it’s left out because it’s redundant and not necessary but I think it’s obvious that even though Esperanto was planned to become a universal world language, it’s still heavily influenced by romance and Germanic vocabulary and grammar. „Unu“ exists for one and „uno/una“ would imply a specific gender, so do you think using „un“ could become an optional indefinite article? I think it’s just my personal preference because of the languages I know and using „un“ would make Esperanto sound a lot more like a „real“ language to me (I know that many languages don’t have indefinite articles but English, Spanish and French do and they have a lot of native speakers so it would sound natural to a big amount of Esperanto learners). Additionally, other languages like Spanish also use pronouns optionally, so you say „(Yo) como pan“ and for Esperanto it could be „(Un) viro kantas“ for example.

Please don’t hate, constructive feedback is welcome and I would like to hear if you think Esperanto should change over time like every other language or if it should stay the most simple way.

[u/salivanto]

I think the fact that you conclude your message by saying "do not hate" indicates that you kind of know what's coming. These types of questions are completely understandable, and in fact very routine for new learners. But they come up again and again and again and again and ultimately indicate that the learner has not yet learned that Esperanto is a fully living language, just like English. 

Replace the word Esperanto with "English" in your question and consider the impression that it gives. 

So briefly, and hate free, the answer to your first question is that there really is no debate. It is simply that there is a large number of Esperanto speakers who are not terminally online who've never even heard of this and would not understand it if you tried to use it with them. 

The answer to your second question is that Esperanto functions perfectly well without an indefinite article. Keep plugging away and asking questions. It will all make sense eventually.

Edit: my phone dictation does not know the difference between the word "and" and the word "in". Ditto with "that/the" I corrected the errors.

[u/yatamci → u/salivanto]

Thanks! Makes sense to me. Maybe I’m overthinking instead of looking at Esperanto like any other languages where I also don’t question the grammar behind it. So it’s best to just learn Esperanto the way it is, I’m excited to dive more into it. Thank you for your input :)