From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Fri Apr 03 1998 - 14:01:02 EST
At 7:06 PM -0600 4/3/98, Ben Crick wrote:
>On Fri 3 Apr 98 (20:13:48 +0800), scox@ns1.chinaonline.com.cn.net wrote:
>> The objection to "brothers and sisters" is usually made on
>> grounds of being 'too cumbersome' to have three words always
>> but it is normal practice with some North Asian languages
>> with a lot of binary character vocabulary to automatically
>> think of rendering one word => two/three/four in English.
>>
>
> What a pity we don't have an English equivalent to the German /Geschwister/.
> Could we coin a new word, "Bristers" or "Bristren"?
We have "siblings," and it's not a very comfortable word for a pastor to
address his congregation with.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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