Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: CHAT: Homo Sapiens (was: fiery spirits)

From:Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>
Date:Wednesday, October 29, 2003, 12:56
At 10:43 23.10.2003, Andreas Johansson wrote:

>Have their ever been an English cognate of Swedish _människa_ (or short >_mänska_ - both with irregular pronunciation of "sk" as [x]) or German >_Mensch_. Both have the desired meaning, altho feminists presumably don't like >the grammatical masculine gender of the later. (That they do not take offense >at the Swedish word being grammatically feminine has already been established >on this list.)
In Old English _man/mon_, while grammatically masculine, meant 'människa', or possibly 'person'. As we all know there was even the word _wifman_ 'female human being', and there was also the phrase _wifhades mon_ (do.). A male human being was refferred to as _wer_ or _guma_ or _ceorl_. Reviving 'goom' seems like a fun but doomed idea. The word _man_ was, in all honesty, probably ambiguous between 'male human being' and 'human being in general'. This was also the case with Old Norse _madr_, whereas in modern Icelandic the male bias of _madur_ has considerably receded, the normal word for 'male person' now being _karl_ or _karlmadur_(*). Interestingly the grammatically masculine _kvenmadur_ seems to be the preferred term for 'woman' since _kona_(**) also means 'wife'. (*) You gotta love the modern pronunciation ["kat_lma:D2r]! (**) _kven-_ is the compound stem of _kona_, which is _kvenna_ in genitive plural. Old Norse also had the grammatically neuter _kván_ (_kvaan_ for the accent-challenged :) /BP 8^) -- B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~__ A h-ammen ledin i phith! \ \ __ ____ ____ _____________ ____ __ __ __ / / \ \/___ \\__ \ /___ _____/\ \\__ \\ \ \ \\ \ / / / / / / / \ / /Melroch\ \_/ // / / // / / / / /___/ /_ / /\ \ / /'Aestan ~\_ // /__/ // /__/ / /_________//_/ \_\/ /Eowine __ / / \___/\_\\___/\_\ Gwaedhvenn Angeliniel\ \______/ /a/ /_h-adar Merthol naun ~~~~~~~~~Kuinondil~~~\________/~~\__/~~~Noolendur~~~~~~ || Lenda lenda pellalenda pellatellenda kuivie aiya! || "A coincidence, as we say in Middle-Earth" (JRR Tolkien)

Replies

John Cowan <cowan@...>
Peter Bleackley <peter.bleackley@...>