Re: What is a woman ?

From: "Steg Belsky" <draqonfayir@...>
Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2004 2:29 PM
Subject: Re: What is a woman ?


> On Friday, January 23, 2004, at 05:28 PM, Philippe Caquant wrote:
> > Thank you everybody !
> > It is very strange to me that in English, the female
> > seems to be a marked form of the general term for
> > "man". There usually seems to be 2 different or
> > symetrical words, like "Mann" und "Frau" in German,
> > "homme" et "femme" in French, "hombre" y "mujer" in
> > Spanish, "muj'china" and "jen'china" in Russian. Are
> > there other natlangs using the English system ?
>
> Hebrew uses "ish" and "isha", but they only *look* similar.  They're
> not actually derived from eachother, i think.
Because of the similarity, Martin Luther translated "Mann und Männin"
instead of "Mann und Frau" when God creates Eve, btw. The word *Männin is a
coinage.


Carsten Becker

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