(no subject)
Ni nire anaiaren arreba naiz, baina nire izeba nire amaren ahizpa da. Ni harrituta nago.
For the most part, Basque is pretty cool about the gender stuff--it didn't get on the PIE train with gendering everything, so there's no he/she, him/her distinction. (Dialects disagree on what, exactly, the third-person pronouns ARE, but they aren't gendered.) However, it has the strangest kinship term this side of China (and, okay, China sorts its kinship terms by gender and age and EVERYTHING. Basque doesn't). Most of the terms are as normal--"aita" for father, "alaba" for daughter, "anaia" for brother and so on. More gendered than Spanish (the site gave "brothers" for "anai-arrebak," mistranslating "hermanos"), but not unusual. But then there's "sister." There are two words for sister, one if she's the sister of a guy and one if she's the sister of a girl. I think "arreba" is the more general term (hence its appearance in "siblings," above), but the web class hasn't explained. THIS NEEDS EXPLANATION. So if my mother is making smalltalk with some people and says, "This is my brother, Jim. Our sister Sandy got stuck at the airport in Phoenix and isn't here," does she use "arreba" or "ahizpa"? Are nuns arrebak or ahizpak? Probably ahizpak since I gather they're mostly each other's sisters? ARGH. Usually I'd pester my teacher about this. Really, I'm just impatient; I'll finish this course, then have the tools to go looking for all the special cases and dialect differences and stuff. There are already major differences (those third-person pronouns) between the book my Grandma got me in high school and the web class.
...it's an interesting word for the feminist sense of "sister," anyway.
For the most part, Basque is pretty cool about the gender stuff--it didn't get on the PIE train with gendering everything, so there's no he/she, him/her distinction. (Dialects disagree on what, exactly, the third-person pronouns ARE, but they aren't gendered.) However, it has the strangest kinship term this side of China (and, okay, China sorts its kinship terms by gender and age and EVERYTHING. Basque doesn't). Most of the terms are as normal--"aita" for father, "alaba" for daughter, "anaia" for brother and so on. More gendered than Spanish (the site gave "brothers" for "anai-arrebak," mistranslating "hermanos"), but not unusual. But then there's "sister." There are two words for sister, one if she's the sister of a guy and one if she's the sister of a girl. I think "arreba" is the more general term (hence its appearance in "siblings," above), but the web class hasn't explained. THIS NEEDS EXPLANATION. So if my mother is making smalltalk with some people and says, "This is my brother, Jim. Our sister Sandy got stuck at the airport in Phoenix and isn't here," does she use "arreba" or "ahizpa"? Are nuns arrebak or ahizpak? Probably ahizpak since I gather they're mostly each other's sisters? ARGH. Usually I'd pester my teacher about this. Really, I'm just impatient; I'll finish this course, then have the tools to go looking for all the special cases and dialect differences and stuff. There are already major differences (those third-person pronouns) between the book my Grandma got me in high school and the web class.
...it's an interesting word for the feminist sense of "sister," anyway.