Re: The Birds and the Bees of Gender
From: | Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> |
Date: | Tuesday, March 30, 1999, 19:59 |
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.
--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
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