Re: Láadan and woman's speak

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