>(pop. and fam.) respect form to adress to a older man or
>to an older brother.; respect word used by neffes
nephews and nieces
>for their uncles..
>Etym.: unknown. look for comparation to SerboCroatin
>"nenja" or Bulgarian "nena".
Does your dictionary also contain "etym. unknown?"
Mine only "compare with Bg. nenja and Sb. nena "mother."
But let's also take this into consideration: in Hungarian
"néni" ['ne:ni] means the femaie counterpart of the
Romanian male "nene" (def. articled "nenea"). Except for
the fact that the Hungarian néni is esp. an *aunt* and in
general an older woman, whereas the Romanian "nene" can
also be an elder brother, not only an uncle and an elder/
older guy around. I don't know the etymology of the
Hungarian néni, but I know that né-/nö- roots have
family of words pertaining to "woman/women, feminine,
female," "growth" and "Geschlecht", both in the sense
of "gender" and "gens" (NB: noble = nemeS). I don't
know whether "néni" is a derivation thereof or a mere
phonetic-cum-semantic coincidence.
BTW: the néni's Hungarian male is... bácsi ['ba:tSi]
- just another... puzzling buzzword, with the meaning,
in Romanian, of both nene and mo$, and which of course
must be akin to Romanian baci [batS] (a certain kind of
elder man). The other meaning of the Romanian nene, namely
elder brother, is rendered in Hungarian by bátya
['ba:-k^O], that has corresponding lexems in Romanian:
bade, b&die, b&diT& (the connotations being
almost the same in most cases); and IIRC in some Slavic
idioms.
>It is strange.... so far I understand more of Albanian
>changes
So, take it easy, don't be in a hurry. All that
glitters is not gold. ;)
>Alex
George