{"id":5773,"date":"2017-03-08T15:32:43","date_gmt":"2017-03-08T15:32:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.utalk.com\/news\/?p=5773"},"modified":"2022-07-06T14:54:50","modified_gmt":"2022-07-06T13:54:50","slug":"blog-is-a-woman-always-a-wife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/blog-is-a-woman-always-a-wife\/","title":{"rendered":"Is a Woman Always a Wife?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s International Women\u2019s Day<\/a>, and what better day to start a debate around the connotations of the word \u2018woman\u2019 itself?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I recently had a moment\u2019s reflection on what it meant to be called a woman whilst on a trip to Shetland, where I learnt that the word \u2018wife\u2019 is used to refer to any woman, regardless of marital status. My Shetlandic host’s comment, one day, that \u2018The wife in the shop was too busy talking to notice me!\u2019 caused me, initially, a second’s confusion: how did she know the shop assistant was married? But of course she didn\u2019t – she was simply talking about ‘the woman’. I was intrigued by this obvious difference in usage between the languages: in standard English, a sister language to Scots, I would always say that a wife and a woman are separate things, with ‘wife’ only meaning \u2018married woman’ (although, conversely, in English slang \u2018your woman\u2019 can refer to \u2018your wife\u2019). But then I recalled that the word \u2018midwife\u2019, from Middle English, literally means \u2018with woman\u2019, so was it possible that Scots, developing along a different pathway to English, maintained an earlier meaning in its current vocabulary than modern English does with its? And was it therefore only to non-Scots speakers that it sounded a little odd to call a woman a wife, because for us the word has a stronger connotation of marital status than it does in Scots (although wife can also be used, of course, in Scots for a married female partner)?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Girls<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Then I thought of French, where \u2018la femme\u2019 can mean both woman and wife, and onto Portuguese, where ‘a mulher\u2019 is used interchangeably. The Catalan word \u2018la dona\u2019, whilst literally meaning woman, is widely used to mean a wife, even though there are two additional words specifically for a female spouse (la muller and l’esposa). And then I ransacked the uTalk translation database to uncover other languages where there\u2019s just the one word. Sure enough, there are plenty: \u0430\u044f\u043b<\/strong> in Kyrgyz, \u04d9\u0439\u0435\u043b<\/strong> in Kazakh, \u0437\u0430\u043d<\/strong> in Tajiki, and a\u00fdal in Turkmen can all mean woman or wife. In Bosnian, \u017eena can be both, as can \u0436\u0435\u043d\u0430<\/strong> in Bulgarian.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In some languages, it also occurs that \u2018man\u2019 and \u2018husband\u2019 are the same word – indeed, English traditional marriage vows end with \u2018I now pronounce you man and wife\u2019. But in both instances, is it the case that historic social gender roles still colour the vocabulary we use in the modern world, where sexual equality is a constantly flaring issue?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019d love to know your thoughts, and whether your language uses the same words for either woman and wife, or man and husband – or separate words, and whether you think our vocabulary choices have a bearing on our perceptions of modern social roles?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nat<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s International Women\u2019s Day, and what better day to start a debate around the connotations of the word \u2018woman\u2019 itself? I recently had a moment\u2019s reflection on what it meant to be called a woman whilst on a trip to Shetland, where I learnt that the word \u2018wife\u2019 is used to refer to any woman, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,51,794],"tags":[46,32,1624,2,781,1627,1626,1625],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5773"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5773"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8866,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5773\/revisions\/8866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}