Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!hercules!sparkyfs!usasoc.soc.mil!aero!netcom.UUCP!chrisj From: chrisj@netcom.UUCP Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: Girl == woman & man == boy ? (was: Re: Girls, girls, girls) Summary: Frau means both woman and wife; Mann means both man and husband Message-ID: <13386@netcom.UUCP> Date: 19 Sep 90 01:26:45 GMT References: <27089@usc.edu> <1990Sep18.012351.27167@agate.berkeley.edu> <5779@ge-dab.GE.COM> Sender: nadel@aerospace.aero.org Organization: Netcom- The Bay Area's Public Access Unix System {408 241-9760 guest} Lines: 39 Approved: nadel@aerospace.aero.org Status: R In article <5779@ge-dab.GE.COM> sulak@ge-dab.ge.COM (John Sulak) writes: >I try to be tolerant and understanding when speaking with people who >speak English as a second language. I have struggled to communicate in >French speaking and Spanish speaking countries. Amen to that, especially if they are making the effort to speak *my* language when I am in their country, and might reasonably be expected to go the extra distance and speak theirs. >I learned German in the 1970's and my knowledge of 'modern' German is >limited. When I learned it, however, I was taught that "Frau" meant >"wife" and "Maedchen" meant "girl". It was either/or. John's German teacher gets a failing mark for that. `Frau' carries either of the English meanings `woman' or `wife', depending on context. Similarly, `Mann' means either `man' or `husband', again depending on context. In Goethe's *Faust*, Mephistopheles greets a women with ``Ihr Mann ist tot, und laesst sich gruessen'', freely translated ``Your husband is dead, and sends his greetings.'' John is exactly right about Maedchen, which BTW is a diminutive made from the root noun Magd (maid). The other standard word for `girl' in German is Fraeulein, which is also a diminutive (of Frau). Just to confuse things, I'll mention that the formal address to a married woman is Frau Schmidt, and to an unmarried woman or to a girl is Fraeulein Schmidt, so that one cannot formally greet an unmarried woman without calling her ``little woman'' or ``girl''! Not having kept up with developments in the German language since I graduated in 1969, I cannot say whether the Germans have developed a greeting analogous to Ms, but I believe they have not. We could go from here to a consideration of the fact that the polite greeting for to a woman unknown to the speaker is Frauelein (as Senorita, also a diminutive I believe, is in Spanish, etc.) and from there to the fact, often enough noted here or in soc.women, that our culture tends to value immaturity and devalue maturity in women, but not in men. But this article is quite long enough as it is. -- Chris (Christopher T. Jewell) chrisj@netcom.uucp apple!netcom!chrisj