"the" wife

[David Bergdahl]

I think there may be an Anglo-Irish dialect item lurking here: it's common for
family members to be referred to as "the brothers" &c.  I remember a
colleague, Jerry Berrigan, whose brothers were two famous anti-war priests,
both imprisoned for their symbolic acts of resistence to the Vietnam War,
saying he was he was going down to "visit the brothers" [in prison].  I have
since encountered it among other Irish.

-- db
___________________________________________________________
David Bergdahl            Ohio University /Athens       tel: (740) 593-2783
home page: http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~bergdahl    fax: (740) 593-2818