Re: The Birds and the Bees of Gender

On Tue, 30 Mar 1999 14:59:37 -0500 Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> writes:
>Padraic Brown wrote:
>> > Parents are the one exception, padre/madre - this is true in ALL
>> > language, father and mother are always different roots.
>> Just a nitpick: patro/patrino in Esperanto.
>Sorry, let me rephrase that, this is true in ALL *natural* languages.
>It's also untrue in my own conlang.  Mother is _tinani'_ (ti- =
>female)
>while father is nlannani' (n- = male, lan- = with), thus "comother".
>It
>is a technical term.  The Natives never know who their father is, and
>never need to know, except in things like genetic research, so it's a
>scientific term.
>
>--
>AIM Screen-name: NikTailor
>
The "different roots" rule is semi-true for 'standard' Rokbeigalmki, but
not at all for colloquial Rokb.
The true words for mother and father are _(a-)bardh_ and _(o-)dabardh_,
with the redundant gender prefixes /?a/ female and /?o/ male.

The root of both is _bard_, "(give) birth", but the root for "father"
comes from the causative form (da+bard), meaning "beget" or "impregnate"
depending on the preposition used.

However, since the word "impregnate" is used in slang/colloquial usage as
a curse equivalent to the "F-word" in English, the word _bard_ has
absorbed the meanings of "beget" and "impregnate" as well, leaving the
forms _a-bardh_ for "mother" and _o-bardh_ for "father".

Rokbeigalmki fathers give birth.... :)


Btw, "Rokbeigalm" is a collective noun, like "cattle" or "people":

singular:  rokbeigalmkidh
plural:  rokbeigalmkidhm
collective:  rokbeigalm

(_rokbeigalmki_ is the adjective)


-Stephen (Steg)
 "anxiety is the dizziness of freedom"

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