Re: Brothers-in-law

On 5/4/06, Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...> wrote:
> On 5/4/06, Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> wrote:
>
> > Apparently, there is no common PIE word for "wife" reconstructable, nor
> > for any wife-relative family terms. What this says about the structure and
> > nature of PIE families is left as an exercise for the reader...
>
> Would it be reasonable to guess that PIE, like
> modern French, used a single word for both
> "woman" and "wife"?  Ancient Greek seems to have
> lost the PIE root for husband as far as I can tell,
> substituting a generic "aner, andros" for man/husband.
> What other languages (IE  or not) have common
> words for "man/husband" and/or  "woman/wife"?
> Are there any commonalities obvious about their
> present or recent past marriage customs?
>
Portuguese uses 'woman' for 'wife', and 'married one' for husband.

Russian has roots for 'husband' and for 'wife', from which the words
for 'man' and 'woman' are built.

---L