Re: Birth-related vocabulary?

Geoff Horswood wrote:
> My announcement post got me thinking.
> How many people have a lot of birth vocabulary in
> their conlangs?  Things like:
> contractions (I don't)
> epidural (I'm not even sure this exists in my most
> advanced conculture)
> IV drip (no)
> heart monitor (I have "heart" and "to watch/to keep")
> foetus (or |fetus| if you insist.  Either way, I don't
> have it)
> to crown (ie for the baby's head to appear) (no)
> placenta (no)
> afterbirth (if this is even a separate word from
> "placenta")
> umbilical cord (no)
> breech presentation (ie coming out bottom-first)
> prenatal/antenatal (no)
> neonatal (no)
>
> A huge vocabulary hole, no?  Hey, I'm not even sure I
> have "to push"!
And is that "push" even the same one as the one you use to move a chair
or open a door?

ea-luna has a fair amount of those, and could make some of the others as
compound words. That's not too surprising, since I have given birth
three times since originally joining the CONLANG list. Epidural didn't
make my list, since my only epidural was pre-conlanging.

One of my languages that didn't quite get off the ground, post-ea-luna,
  didn't distinguish between "infant" and "fetus". There was a word for
embryo, and then fetus-through-birth-and-up-to-crawling-stage, which
happened to also be the word for "larva". That particular language had a
lot of family and animal vocabulary, but was short on... well,
everything else.


> And if your conSpeakers are not placental mammals, you
> have a whole raft of other possibilities.  Anyone have
> a word for an unhatched bird or reptile?  Is there a
> special word for the neonate of a marsupial that isn't
> really even a full infant yet?
One would think I'd have a word for that, since I used to keep sugar
gliders, but I don't. ea-luna has a word for sugar gliders, but not for
the joeys-in-the-pouch.

>
> Food for much thought...
>
Hmmm... I may have to tackle your vocabulary list there for Teliya
Nevashi, after I finish my Babel text translation (half way there!
Yay!). I have very, very little vocabulary so far, but I do like
developing on a theme when I am not developing through compositions and
translation. I don't even have a word for "body" or "mother", much less
"pregnancy" or "birth"...

Mia.