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Re: Father/Motherland

From:Vasiliy Chernov <bc_@...>
Date:Tuesday, May 23, 2000, 14:01
On Mon, 22 May 2000 01:19:18 -0500, Ed Heil <edh@...> wrote:

>On Sun, May 21, 2000 at 06:54:23PM -0400, John Cowan wrote: >> Raymond Brown scripsit:
<...>
>> 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."
Actually, Russian has *two* equivalents of 'fatherland' (_otechestvo_ and _otchizna_, both sounding a bit pathetic) and no litteral equivalents of 'motherland' or 'homeland'. But the most common (and stylistically neutral) word (_rodina_) translates literally as 'birthland' or 'native land'; the traditional translation is 'motherland' - perhaps, because 'birth' is more usually associated with maternity. I am not really fluent in Polish, but I kinda remember that it has the equivalent of _otchizna_ (_ojcizna_, IIRC; luckily, no diacritics this time ;) ). Unfortunately, I haven't read that often-quoted book by [v_jeZb_jít_ska], but I suppose her analysis somehow made account of all those words... ;) (since Polish is her L1, and some Russians who met her told me her Russian was good). If she does classify Russian as a 'motherland' language, her reasoning must have been less straightforward: there does exist a *cultural* association between 'homeland' and motherhood (and a standard collocation _rodina-mat'_, lit. 'Homeland-the-Mother'). Besides, of the three synonyms two (_rodina_ and _otchizna_) are feminine nouns, one (_otechestvo_) is neuter, and none is masculine. Basilius