On Sun, 18 Feb 2001 01:16:59 +0100, "Piotr Gasiorowski"
<
gpiotr@...> wrote:
>The replacement of central family terms may seem odd, but it isn't all that rare. Proto-Slavic replaced *ph2te:r with the nursery diminutive *at(t)-iko- (> *otIcI)
And in present day Polish, <ojciec> is felt to be too "formal", and
<tata> is preferred, even when speaking to people outside the family.
For "mother", the recycling has gone even faster (unlike what happened
in the Proto-Slavic period): <mac'> (from PIE *meh2ter-) gave way to
the diminutive <matka>, which is now felt to be too formal and is
being replaced by the nursery word <mama>.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...