#nibling

[stonedeadforever]

Klippdassen from mumin :)

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

I'm all for the use of non-gendered language and options for non-binary people, I just want them to make linguistic sense. "Nibling" sounds dumb. If you want a gender-neutral word for niece/nephew, it should share etymology with them. They both descend from the Proto-Indo-European root *nepot-, so there are a ton of plausible sounding options for derivations that don't call attention to themselves as neologisms.

Nepot is too visually similar to nephew, and sounds too much like the derivative nepotism, so maybe drop the p like Spanish did and go with something like nete or niete. Niete is too close to niece; nite, maybe? Or neti? Neit, neiti, neite, nit. These all look like real words, not clumsy 21st century portmanteaus like "nibling." If p and t are no good, we can go with another unvoiced stop like k. Nik, neik, nike (probably not that one), niki, neki, neke, nekie, so many possibilities, anything but "nibling."

Same thing with aunt/uncle. I've never heard a non-gendered term that sounds like something a layperson would use.

Hewhos became ewos, became avus, became avunculus, became uncle. Aunt is derived from words that mean mother; amma, amita, ante, aunt. I thought the word parent derived from the same root as paternal meaning father, but no, it's from the PIE root *pere-, mening to bring forth or produce. Sibling ultimately derives from the PIE root for self/oneself (*swe-), literally meaning same blood, related to myself, kin. "Parent's sibling" could be derived from swepere, swepar, suepar, supar, maybe something like sempar, "same parent/same source," simpar (maybe avoid anything with simp in it). Or "one source," onpar, honpar, paron, paroin, peron, peroine (from PIE *hoinom for one). I'm not thinking of germanic soundshifts, how these roots would evolve directly into English, I'm thinking broader, like how they would evolve in Latin or French to be loaned into English. If you want a neutral word that looks like it belongs with aunt and uncle, maybe something like umpar, umper, ompar, onpar, onper, onter, anything like that.

[gendercensus]

I think "nibling" gets chosen for "another child of your parents" as a portmanteau of "nonbinary sibling"

Here's what Wiktionary says:

Etymology Blend of nephew or niece +‎ sibling, coined by the American linguist Samuel Elmo Martin (1924–2009) in 1951.[1]

The word nonbinary to refer to gender seems to have evolved around 2000 or so, which means nibling predates nonbinary by about 50 years!

Edit: Hold on, my brain went too fast, I'll just slow down a bit. 🐌 Do you mean that people saw the gender-neutral word sibling, and wanted to make it nonbinary-gender-exclusive, and therefore nibling (nonbinary sibling) was created parallel to nibling (niece/nephew + sibling)?

If so, can anyone chime in on this? I would love to know more! (E.g., did you come to nibling as "nonbinary sibling" before you knew about the word already meaning niece/nephew? Did you know about the niece/nephew version but just decided it should be used for "nonbinary sibling" instead? etc.)

[kat-reich-4222000]

Credit goes to @gorillaprutt for the sketch ⬇️

Post by @gorillaprutt · 1 image

💬 1  🔁 2948  ❤️ 5482 · "You were both impossible when you were four, your mother and father said it would probably be the first and last tim

[writing-with-olive]

OKAYY so. I'm not a Linguist tm, but I am taking a class in it, which empowered me to see if i could come up with gender-neutral "niece/nephew" that also follows from the same latin roots, since to my knowledge "nibling" doesn't, so it opens an interesting puzzle.

I'm showing my math under the cut, but based on the way niece/nephew evolved I propose navom (NAY-vum) instead.

Okay. If anyone has critiques on my work in a way that doesn't just get us nephew again, please feel free to discuss.

The way I've laid this out is to trace nephew / niece line to get a sense for how transitions happen, and then I go into how I thought through the neuter version.

Step 1:

Both words come from the proto-indo-european (PIE) "nepōts" nep - ōt - s -> descendant, noun-ifier, singular masculine

Step 2 (masc):

Moving into classical Latin, we get "nepos." nep - ot - s -> unchanged root, "t" isn't pronounced due to shortened vowel sound and contact with "s", still singular masculine

Step 3 (masc):

Vulgar Latin, which was the precursor to the romance languages saw the word shift to "nepotem" nep - ot - em -> same root, "t" is back because no more "s", latin endings were leveled/simplified so we get "-em"

Step 4 (masc):

Old French gives us "neveu," which. Big change. nev - eu -> the "p" softens to "β" then to "v" as was typical moving into romance languages, the "em" nazalized and combined with the preceding "o" to make the "-eu"

Step 5 (masc):

English borrowed the term and adjusted it to our needs, giving us "nephew" neph - ew -> "v" sound became "f", spelling was adjusted to English standards

-----

Step 2 (fem):

Latin gave us "neptis" nep - t - is -> same root, noun-ifier but modified for the i-stem that follows, singular feminine

Step 3 (fem):

Then we get Vulgar Latin "neptia" nep - t - ia -> same root, same transition, "ia" ending standardized word with other feminine words

Step 4 (fem):

Another big jump. Old French gives us "niece" nie - ce -> vowel rose from "eh" to "ee" following trends before palatal consonants, "tia" became "tsia" became "ts" became "s" as it palatized

Step 5 (fem):

English, as before, grabbed the term and ran with it. In this case, no changes. We have "niece"

---

Step 2 (neu):

Okay so thing with Latin is that people-nouns are inherently binary. So I had to get a bit creative, and look at singular third person neuter endings that *didn't* imply people-ness, and instead implied "concept." From there, I got Latin "nepomen" nep - o - men -> base root, non-morpheme connector sound, neuter singular ending

Step 3 (neu):

Vulgar Latin would likely give us "nepome," due to the way people would likely drop the final "n." This is based on parallel patterns of similar words dropping final the "n" in "-men" endings.

Step 4 (neu):

Like with the Old French in nephew/niece, we get some greater phonological shifts. "nep" will become "nev" and the "e" ending will reduce down to near-silence, if not fully disappearing. Thus we would get something like "nevom(e)"

Step 5 (neu):

Here's where English would borrow from Old French. English tends to put the stress on the penultimate syllable, which would be the first one in a two syllable word, which would emphasize it: the "e" sound would become "ay." We'd also drop any residual schwa on the end of the word. Hence, we'd end up with "nevom"

[elemonsters]

Should consider a beast/wyrm, always fun

went insane and made the pseudo legendary for the region

Nibling / Dracodile / Grandile Wyrm/Beast with a movepool that hosts a lot of aero-type attacks, typically they are found in the Draken Chasm and the peaks of Spynel mountain

[rosetyler42]

XD Thought of this one while I was out. Kinda funny HT never did a reference like this to movie Griffin, So I had the kids dress up their uncle for funsies.

@lovelylivelyv @deathfangirl9 @heartsong1994 @hotelt-resurrection @oneocean890

[freehugzz]

My boysssss

I think I got Muddler's eyes somewhere I like finally... Maybe... Perchance...