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Hi Alison, Fanny isn't really used much in America. Its a bit old hat, but today to ass politely it's Butt. We laugh too when the term Bum comes up. What I think is most intriguing is the little feeling that brings up that giggle. Best, Geoffrey ----- Original Message ----- From: "Árni Ibsen" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2003 7:44 PM Subject: Re: Reading Williams / Whitman > on 1/25/03 11:42 PM, Alison Croggon at [log in to unmask] wrote: > > > it put paid to my much > > touted position that the vocabularies women had for their fannies > > were hugely limited compared to those for men. (Actually, the > > American usage of fanny, being "bum", is very funny to us down here; > > we still tend to the English usage, meaning vagina, so to fall on > > one's fanny is rather painful and physically challenging image.) > > That disparity between male and female terms is true if you look it > > up in dictionaries and so on, the male slang goes on for pages; but > > clearly oral history, the "mother tongue", is the place to look for > > these private vocabularies, and it's more a comment on the biases of > > those word hoards than on the language itself. > > Those linguistically oppressed people of The Faroes have it again! I think > they have the most decent name for the vagina of all! It's called 'Gina' in > that minority of minorites of languages! How sweet! And the 'shocking' > show's made their traditional 'Gina-cookies' redundant. Icelandic, at least, > is spoken by some (possibly) 300.000 - 400.000 people, but Faroese is spoken > by fewer than a 100.000 people. > > Árni > > > -- > Árni Ibsen > Stekkjarkinn 19, > 220 Hafnarfjördur, > Iceland > > tel.: +354-555-3991 > e-mail: [log in to unmask] > http://www.centrum.is/~aibsen/ > > >