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Original poster

Word for woman or women in other languages?

67 replies

Cailleach1 · 21/10/2020 17:27

Just that. I'd love to see the many varied words for adult homo sapiens of the female sex around the world? Many words, but only having one specific meaning.

Bean (sounds like 'ban' in English) means woman and Mná (sounds like meh-naw in English) means women in Irish.

OP posts:
CharlieParley · 21/10/2020 22:11

@AdultHumanFemale

Kvinna in Swedish.

Also nice is that the direct translation of the Swedish word for 'womb' -livmoder- is 'life mother'.

In German it's a compound word made out of gebären (giving birth) and Mutter (mother) = Gebärmutter

The cervix is called the neck of the womb = Gebärmutterhals. Cervical cancer is Cancer of the neck of the womb = Gebärmutterhalskrebs.

Oilnwater · 21/10/2020 21:35

Žena is Slovak
This thread is very interesting, I love the point a previous poster made about knowing the word woman in many languages but not knowing the word cervix in any.
Off the top of my head I could count six languages I know how to say woman in.

AdultHumanFemale · 21/10/2020 21:29

Kvinna in Swedish.

Also nice is that the direct translation of the Swedish word for 'womb' -livmoder- is 'life mother'.

Maerchentante · 21/10/2020 21:27

Nowadays, "Frau" is used in German for females when they are being referred to (i.e. Frau SoandSo) unless someone really old still makes the distinction between Miss and Mrs. Then it is either Fräulein (Miss, unmarried) or Frau (Mrs, married). But that distinction has fallen by the wayside and Fräulein is barely used.

shelvira · 21/10/2020 21:22

ahagwearsapointybonnet - it's interesting because I read somewhere recently that the word 'woman' comes from the word 'man' plus the word 'womb'. Womb + man = woman.

So no need for the cervix to be in the frame - it's simpler than that.

MaryBerrysChutney · 21/10/2020 21:17

@user1493242132

Aurat in Hindi
Apparently it is Urdu. Stree is Hindi. as confirmed by my Indian friend.
jessstan1 · 21/10/2020 21:13

Agehya in Cherokee

DidoLamenting · 21/10/2020 21:01

Quine is girl or young woman in Doric (northeast Scotland- Aberdeenshire, Kincardineshire, Morayshire, Banffshire)

YolkiPalki · 21/10/2020 20:57

Zhinka in Ukrainian

PopperUppleton · 21/10/2020 20:50

Lass in Yorkshire Grin

BookWitch · 21/10/2020 20:48

wanita in Malay

(man is lelaki)

and Welsh is an interesting one - lots of regional variants - dynes (a man is dyn), but there is also merch, menyw and gwraig (but that really means wife to me)

Sunbird24 · 21/10/2020 20:21

In Arabic:
امرأة pronounced Imra’a or نساء pronounced niseh’ (as close as I can transliterate them!)

ahagwearsapointybonnet · 21/10/2020 20:21

I was thinking about this the other day in relation to the "people with a cervix" debate. Someone on Twitter was explaining this wouldn't be helpful for people with little English as they wouldn't know what a cervix was.

Some smart-arsed TRA replied that if they had little English, they wouldn't know the word "woman" either. So I started counting up how many languages I could say "woman" or at least "lady" in - I managed mujer (Spanish), femme (French), Frau (German), donna (Italian) and Vrouw (Dutch) just off the top of my head, even though I forgot Irish, and I only really speak two of those languages.

On the other hand, I've no idea of the word for "cervix" in any of them, even in the language I spoke from childhood...

JustSpeculation · 21/10/2020 20:12

Kadin in Turkish, or Avrat in eastern Turkic dialects. Similar to the Urdu and Hindi words...

Natsku · 21/10/2020 19:58

@CharlieParley

Interestingly, Sorbian knows a dual form in addition to the usual singular and plural ones.

I should add to the above that the second term, žeńska, which is more commonly used, also has a second meaning of "wife".
While the equivalent word for man means either human or man or husband.

Funny how many languages have done this, framing males as the default human.

Is there a language where the word for woman is also the generic term for human?

In Finnish 'nainen' derives from the verb 'naida' which means to marry (also means to fuck) so I guess woman is what you marry. Man is mies which is just man or husband, so man is default and woman is just what the man marries.
vesuvia · 21/10/2020 19:44

Words for woman:

Emakume - in Basque
Maouez - in Breton
Dona - in Catalan

DrinkFeckArseGirls · 21/10/2020 19:43

Kobieta/ Kobiety in Polish.

SulisMinerva · 21/10/2020 19:41

Vrouw/Vrouwen in Dutch.

aliasundercover · 21/10/2020 19:05

ผู้หญิง In Thai. It’s pronounced something like: pooo yiiinnng

DoraemonDingDong · 21/10/2020 19:00

@bellinique

Nuren in Chinese. Which seems to mean female man Hmm
No, rén 人 means person 女人 nǚ rén is woman 男人 nán rén is man

In Mandarin.

Delphinium20 · 21/10/2020 18:59

Old German used to have 'wif' for woman and 'wer' for man. 'Man' version was person. See how wer evolved to the default human? Some vestiges remain (e.g.werewolf=wolf man).

Modern versions of this are: wife/woman/man in English

In German: Frau (wife or woman), Mann (man)

Icelandic: Kona (woman)
Norwegian: kvinne (woman but also can be wife) but hunn is female and male is hann.

But most Germanic based languages have evolved to forms of "man" for the penis havers. It used to just mean "human"

Geoffry · 21/10/2020 18:51

nő in Hungarian, or plural nők (pronounced nur and nurk)

CharlieParley · 21/10/2020 18:40

Interestingly, Sorbian knows a dual form in addition to the usual singular and plural ones.

I should add to the above that the second term, žeńska, which is more commonly used, also has a second meaning of "wife".
While the equivalent word for man means either human or man or husband.

Funny how many languages have done this, framing males as the default human.

Is there a language where the word for woman is also the generic term for human?

CharlieParley · 21/10/2020 18:28

žona and žeńska in the two Sorbian dialects spoken in Germany. Interesting to see the similarities to Russian there, MrsSnitchnose (both obviously derived from Proto-Balto-Slavic).

Still just means adult human female.

PikesPeaked · 21/10/2020 18:23

אשה
Isha - woman

נשים
Nashim - women

In Hebrew. A very gendered language.