<div dir="ltr"><div><h1 id="gmail-headline" class="gmail-headline" style="visibility: visible;">Talking to In-laws Can Be Hard. In Some Languages, It’s Impossible.</h1>
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<p class="gmail-byline">By <span>
<span class="gmail-byline-author">BRYANT ROUSSEAU</span>
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<time class="gmail-dateline" datetime="2017-01-12T19:42:20-05:00">JAN. 9, 2017</time>
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<p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content">In-laws
may be universally intimidating, but in some cultures, the deference
paid them rises to a whole new level, at least linguistically.</p><p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content">A
geographically widespread practice known as avoidance speech, or
“mother-in-law languages,” imposes strict rules on how one speaks — or
doesn’t — to the parents of a spouse, with daughters-in-law typically
bearing the brunt of such limits.</p><p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content">In parts of Africa, Australia and <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/india/index.html?inline=nyt-geo" title="More news and information about India." class="gmail-meta-loc">India</a>,
some societies restrict the words a person can say after marriage. Some
cultures have even barred all direct communication with parents-in-law.</p><p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content">Some married women who speak the Kambaata language of <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/ethiopia/index.html?inline=nyt-geo" title="More news and information about Ethiopia." class="gmail-meta-loc">Ethiopia</a>
follow ballishsha, a rule that forbids them from using words that begin
with the same syllable as the name of their father-in-law or
mother-in-law.</p><p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content">This
rule can complicate a conversation, but there are workarounds. Certain
basic words in the vocabulary come in synonymous pairs. “One is the
normal term, used by everybody; one is the term used by women who are
not allowed to say that word,” said Yvonne Treis, a linguist at a French
research institute, Languages and Cultures of Sub-Saharan Africa.</p>
<p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content" id="gmail-story-continues-1">Euphemisms
are another frequent solution: If the word “ox” is taboo for a wife to
say, she may refer to “the one that plows” instead. The Kambaata
language also has a word akin to “whatchamacallit” in English, useful in
a pinch as either a noun or verb when no other alternative is
available.</p><p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content">Avoidance
speech is also practiced by speakers of some of the Bantu languages of
southern Africa, including Xhosa and Zulu. Married women are forbidden
from using their father-in-law’s name, or any word that has the same
root or similar sound.</p><p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content">Bantu
speakers often get around this restriction by borrowing synonyms from
other languages spoken nearby. Some linguists think that is how click
consonants found their way into Bantu speech: in words borrowed from <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/world/what-in-the-world/click-languages-taa-xoon-xoo-botswana.html">Khoisan languages, which use clicks extensively</a>.</p><p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content">In <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/world/asia/bangalore-india-women-factories.html">parts of India</a>,
a daughter-in-law is not allowed to use words that begin with the same
letters as her in-laws’ names, requiring her to use a parallel
vocabulary.</p><p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content">Avoidance
speech was a common feature of many aboriginal languages in Australia.
The custom has largely faded in some areas, but it is still widely
practiced in the Western Desert region and Arnhem Land, according to
Claire Bowern, a professor of linguistics at Yale.</p><p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content">Avoidance
speech can be more of a two-way street in Australia, with restrictions
applying across genders and generations. There are aboriginal cultures
where a man and his mother-in-law are forbidden to directly address each
other. “In my experience, the taboos between a man and a mother-in-law
are a lot stronger than between a woman and her mother-in-law,”
Professor Bowern said.</p><p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content">As
in Africa and India, there are a number of rules in Australian
languages about which words one can say in the presence of “tabooed
kin,” Professor Bowern said. For example, in the Dyirbal language,
spoken in northeast Queensland, water is “bana” in the everyday language
but “jujama” in avoidance speech.</p><p class="gmail-story-body-text gmail-story-content">Of course, there isn’t a second word for everything, and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=R5w8AAAAIAAJ&lpg=PA64&dq=In%20Guugu%20Yimidhirr%20the%20avoidance%20speech%20verb%20bali-l%20%E2%80%98travel%E2%80%99%20covers%20several%20everyday%20verbs%20meaning%20%E2%80%98go%E2%80%99%2C%20%E2%80%98walk%E2%80%99%2C%20%E2%80%98crawl%E2%80%99%2C%20%E2%80%98paddle%E2%80%99%2C%20%E2%80%98float%2C%20sail%2C%20drift%E2%80%99%2C%20and%20%E2%80%98limp%20along%E2%80%99.&pg=PA64#v=onepage&q&f=false">one avoidance word often has to suffice for many related ordinary words</a>.
In the Guugu Yimithirr tongue, spoken in the far north of Queensland,
the verb “bali-l,” meaning to travel, is the all-purpose substitute for
more specific words like walk, crawl, limp, paddle or float.</p>Why
did the custom of avoidance speech arise? Some experts on its use in
Africa and India see it as a way to reinforce the inferior status of
daughters-in-law. In Australia, the prohibitions might have been
intended to reduce the chance of sexual relations between in-laws<br></div><br>Forwarded from NYTimes 1/13/17<br clear="all"><div><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br><br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/" target="_blank">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************</div>
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