Re: CHAT: Homo Sapiens (was: fiery spirits)
| From: | Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, October 29, 2003, 12:56 |
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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)
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