Re: Male and female animals

Zesefde Herman Miller  <hmiller@...> ta 2002.10.27. her 20:42:33 -5h:

> deer     buck     doe      fawn
> On the other hand, it might be interesting to do without specific words
> entirely, even for humans! So "woman" would be "she-human" (urvi^va) and
> "buck" would be "he-deer" (mi^vo.^sa).
>
Well Long Wer have words for "male", "female", and "child/cub" and also
"male cub" (female cub is equal to general cub) (ngo and ayí) but only in general sense,
regardless of species. And almost no animal has distinct names of the male and female.
The gender is only expressed by the gender of the noun.

For example:
 úin "deer/doe" wyen "buck" and inpúin / yenpiwyen for fem./gen. and male "fawn".
For fawn there is also úinq/wyenq.

But these are all just the forms of the word úin with regularly changed gender (
u > w(e), i > y(e), etc. )
and added diminutive (-q).

The (yet) only irregular animal name is the word mau "cat" (probably because the
speakers are cats too),
with male form miw, diminutive mauq (neutral/female) / mawke (male) (the latter is
also spelt mawqe).
--
Mau
Ábrahám Zsófia alias Mau Rauszer
|  http://www.hiaqimau.tk  |
"Yú lawe ta mau yibali taqe amissi qi ú neb dagu tawiy iq." -- Kipling

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