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OT: Stillbirth, naming stuff (Was Re: What? the clean-shaven outnumber the bearded?...)

From:Mia Soderquist <all4thebetter@...>
Date:Tuesday, May 20, 2003, 12:33
--- Tristan McLeay <kesuari@...> wrote:
> I understand that in Australia, miscarriages aren't > considered human > (i.e. don't require birth/death certificates), but > at least some kinds > of stillbirths do. This can sometimes create a > problem when adults are > asked to name what they don't consider nameable, as > it wasn't ever, to > them, human.
During one of my pregnancies, my mother-in-law and I got into a weird (and uncomfortable) discussion about pregnancy and stillbirth. She was of the mind that any child she hadn't seen wasn't real to her, and so she would NOT want to see (or think much about) a stillborn child. I am rather the opposite way. In my mind at least, yon hypothetical child would have been real and human to me from the moment I got wind of his/her embryonic existence. I'd be pretty freaked out if I didn't get to see. That would be like someone leaving without saying goodbye. For her, a name might be hard. For me... well, I name my houseplants, so maybe I am not a good example. Everything is potentially nameable to me. The plant on my window sill is Edward. My computer is Geraldine. My husband's computer is Marvin. The TV doesn't get a name, because I don't talk to it much. ;) Anyway, I am a bit of an anomaly in regard to both my feelings above and the naming thing, I suppose. I wonder how other people divide up 'nameable' and 'unnameable' things. Ea-luna has a ton of different words for the whole reproductive process. Ea-luna distinguishes 'fetus' (kata) from 'baby'(tinu), but not all my languages have gotten that far. Pregnancy in ea-luna is a literal matter of being the mother (dina) of (a) 'kata' (katalidina). There's a word for miscarriage that escapes me, but I am pretty sure it is another 'kata' compound, probably involving 'lu'(death)... "katalu" strikes me as the word now that I think about it. There's no word for stillbirth, but I imagine it would be a similar compound with 'tinu'. I will have to check my list of compound words. I have a list of the ones that are regular vocabulary items now, and not ones that I just make up on the fly, which may or may not make the permanent list. Alyador (formerly Míjador) is a little light on the lexicon side of things yet, and I don't think it covers any of that stuff, although it does have a pretty thorough set of terms dividing up already-born people into age categories... But that's another topic... See? I almost posted something halfway on topic for a change. Mia. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com

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Tristan McLeay <kesuari@...>