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Re: Láadan and woman's speak

From:John Cowan <cowan@...>
Date:Sunday, May 21, 2000, 22:54
Raymond Brown scripsit:

> (1) while in English we can speak about one's native country as > "fatherland" _or_ "mother-land",
I always thought it would be interesting to construct a table of "fatherland" languages (e.g. German), "motherland" languages (e.g. Russian), and either-or languages (e.g. English).
> we _always_ use the term "mother-tongue" > for one's native language - I've never heard or seem the expression > *father-tongue (nor does my dictionary list it).
In one of Ursula LeGuin's essays, she uses the term "father-tongue" for the language variety of public discourse; by contrast "mother-tongue" means the language of the home. (It may have been "-language", I'm not sure.) The episode/chapter in the PBS TV series/book _The English Language_ that is about Cockney is called "The Muvver Tongue".
> I guess "u in 'dune'" is meant to be [u:]; but this IMHO is a gross example > of 'Amerocentrism'. Is SHE really not aware that to most of the > non-American anglophone world the 'u' in 'dune' is [ju] or [ju:]? (The > only other area which has [du:n] AFAIK is East Anglia in Britain.)
SHE is a linguistics professional, so she understands these distinctions, but is probably trying to adapt to an audience of American non-phonologists. -- John Cowan cowan@ccil.org Yes, I know the message date is bogus. I can't help it. --me, on far too many occasions