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13 October 2019

'Parent' in Hindi?

One strange insight that hit me hard the other day, while talking in Hindi to one companion from India, at the university the other day: Hindi does not have a word for 'parent'!  We have a word for 'mother', a word for 'father' but not for 'parent'.  The closest word we use for parent in Hindi is माँ बाप or माता पिता ... that is 'mother-father'. 

Or perhaps nuanced Hindi has one, but it certainly is not in common use.  I wonder why is that so.  How come the English (Western?) language coined a common word to indicate both parents while the ancient Hindi never really thought it necessary to have a single word denoting both parents.  Parents were always specified as 'mother-father'.  

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