Father/Motherland
| From: | Ed Heil <edh@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, May 22, 2000, 6:19 |
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On Sun, May 21, 2000 at 06:54:23PM -0400, John Cowan wrote:
> 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).
Russian and Polish "motherland" vs. German "fatherland" are some of
the terms that Anna Wierzbicka examines in her book on "cultural
keywords." I don't buy her theory of semantic primes being psycho-
logically real, but she has used them to great effect to examine
subtle cross-cultural differences in apparently 'equivalent' words in
this book. I wish I could remember the title so I could recommend it
highly. :)
Ed