SIGNIFICANT OTHER: Increasingly Significant Issue

[Mark A Mandel]

On Thu, 11 Apr 2002, Douglas Bigham wrote:

#Anecdotal:
#
#1.) My man-boy and I switch between "boyfriend" and "fiancé'".  Once we're
#married (the gay symbolic kind) I'll be his "husband", laws be damned.  I
#really don't think I've heard anyone my age use "partner" or "lover".

The Artist GoH (Guest of Honor, pron. = "go"; older pron [gOx] with
low-mid back rounded vowel and voiceless velar fricative) at this year's
Arisia (large sf convention in Boston, www.arisia.org) used that term to
refer to his S.O.

#2.)  The book "Babel 17", author not remembered at this moment

Samuel Delany. This one is high on my list of linguistic sf. More
recently I enjoyed Janet Kagan's _Hellspark_.

-- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and
   Philological Busybody
   a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel