Geschlecht: Himbeere / Sex: Raspberry

[pne]

So when signing up for SES 2012 in Nitra (an Esperanto meeting), the choices for “sex” were ina (female) and malina (opposite-of-female). I picked the latter.

Just now, looking through the Kauderwelsch guide to Slovak, I see that malina means “Himbeere” (raspberry).

This amuses me :)

Hm, now I wonder whether ina means anything in Slovak; it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that it means “different” (based on knowing the Polish word inny).

And indeed, iná (with a long final vowel) means “other, different”.

So I guess men are raspberries and women are “other”!

Comments

[shoaling_souls]

Malina is raspberry in the southern slavic languages as well (all of them, as far as i'm aware. From Slovenia to Bulgaria and all the countries in between, except Hungary, which changed it to málna when they borrowed the word.