Re: Rebbetzin Zamenhof?

Steg Belsky wrote:

> Hi,
> i was just reading a book on the history of the hebrew language recently,
> and it said that "it is believed that this ending influenced Zamenhof,
> the creator of Esperanto, to choose the suffix -edzin to denote a
> 'married woman'."
>
> The "this ending" it's talking about is the _-tzin_ at the end of the
> Yiddish word _rebbetzin_, meaning "wife of the rabbi".
>
> So, i don't get something....how can you have a suffix for a married
> woman?  What does that mean?  What's it used for?
"Edz-" in Esperanto is a *root* meaning, originally, a married male,
although many modern Esperantists use the term in a gender neutral
fashion.  E-o also has a suffix -in-, which feminizes roots.   Supposing
that Zamenhof actually got that root from Hebrew, he may have derived
the root as a backformation from *edzin- and reanalyzed that into two
constituent morphemes, perhaps under the influence of German -in /-In/
(feminizing suffix).  So, the book was just confusing the origin of the term
with the fact that it involved some sort of suffixation.



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Tom Wier <twier@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

"Only the educated are free." - Epictetus
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