Re: Rating Languages

> laokou scripsit:
>
> > I encountered the Japanese compound (in Chinese) "mu3qin1", "mother", so,
> > mentally converting it to "boshin" (onyomi),  I decided to impress the
> > natives with my new-found word. Fortunately, I tried it out on a kind woman.
> > "Boshin?" she sniggered, and after a few moments of uncontrolable
> > tee-hee-heeing, she gently said, "Actually, we read that 'hahaoya'
>
> I'd actually be pretty surprised if the word for "mother" were a borrowing,
> and yeah, I know about Finnish äiti < Gothic aiþei, where "ei" is Gothic
> spelling for "ii".
>
...whereas the native Finno-Ugric word for "mother", /em&/ in Finnish, is
restricted to mother animals. This is unique in the Balto-Finnic
languages, all the others have the native FU word for "mother".