Re: Male and female animals
| From: | BP Jonsson <bpj@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, October 29, 2002, 10:31 |
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At 20:42 27.10.2002 -0500, Herman Miller wrote:
>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).
Icelandic has something like these. The etymological equivalent of English
_man_ is _maður_, which in modern Icelandic usually means 'human', while
the usual word for 'man' is _karl_ [k_hat_l], and 'woman' is _kona_.
Then there are also _karlmaður_ 'male human, male person' and _kvenmaður_
'female human/person', which are in rather frequent use.
/ B.Philip Jonsson B^)>
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No man forgets his original trade: the rights of nations and of kings sink
into questions of grammar, if grammarians discuss them.
-Dr. Samuel Johnson (1707 - 1784)