Re: [lojban] What's the deal with me'ispe and bunspe?

[Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu>]

On Monday, March 05, 2012 03:30:58 Jonathan Jones wrote:
> The problem is that it is the gender of the married person that is taken
> into account, not the gender of the person being spoken of. Whether I am a
> brother-in-law or a sister-in-law has nothing to do with the gender of my
> married sibling.
> 
> Also, why does it matter which of the two is the married one? If Man1
> marries Woman1 who has a brother Man2, Man2 is Man1's brother-in-law, and
> Man1 is Man2's brother-in-law. If Man1 also has a biological or adopted
> brother Man3, then Man2 and Man3 are also each other's brothers-in-law,
> even if neither of them are married.
> 
> If any sibling from family A marries any sibling from family B, then every
> sibling in family A is a sibling-in-law to every sibling in family B,
> except for the two who are married, as they are spouses, not
> siblings-in-law.

You seem to be unacquainted with different kinship term systems. Inlaws zo'u, 
Lojban is descriptive, whereas English is classificatory. There are some 
languages in which different terms for "cousin" are used depending on whether 
their parents are siblings of the same sex or of different sexes. There's no 
reason why Lojban should use the same system as English.

I don't know enough of Hindi, Chinese, or Arabic to say anything about their 
kinship terms, but I do know some Spanish and Russian. Both languages preserve 
some in-law terms inherited from Indo-European. Russian is more descriptive, 
Spanish more classificatory. Spanish has:
nuera: daughter-in-law
yerno: son-in-law
cuñado, cuñada: brother-in-law, sister-in-law (in both directions)
suegro, suegra: father-in-law, mother-in-law
Russian has:
сноха: a man's son's wife
зять: daughter's husband
деверь: husband's brother
свёкор: husband's father
тесть: wife's father
Cognates:
сноха=nuera (and Old English snoru, lost in Modern English)
зять=yerno
деверь (Latin levir, lost in Spanish)
свёкор=suegro (and Old English sweor, lost in Modern English).

Pierre
-- 
gau do li'i co'e kei do

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.