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

--- 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

Reply