[This entry comes from the second section of chapter 7, "Words for family relations", of Part II of the book Spanish-English Cognates.]
Eng. parent ~ Sp. pariente and related words
The word for the mother-father
pair in English is parents, plural of
parent.
This word comes from Lat. părĕntem,
accusative form of părēns,
a noun meaning ‘a procreator, a father or mother, a parent’, typically used in
the plural in Latin, with the meaning ‘grandparents, and, in gen., progenitors,
ancestors’ and, later, ‘relations, kinsfolk, kindred’ (L&S) (nominative
plural: părĕntēs
‘mother and father’). Contrary to what one might have thought, this Latin noun is
not related to the Latin word for ‘father’. Rather, it is derived from the
identical present participle (nom. parens,
gen. părĕntis, acc. părĕntem) of the verb parĕre ‘to give birth to’
(also: ‘to bring forth’, ‘to produce’), thus meaning ‘giving birth, etc.’. From
this verb comes the patrimonial Spanish verb parir, with the same
meaning, ‘to give birth to’ and, sometimes in a figurative sense, ‘to produce’.
(This verb’s principal parts are: parĭō,
parĕre, peperī, partum and it is one of a number of third conjugation ‑ĕre
Latin verbs that changed to third or ‑ir
conjugation in Spanish.)
English borrowed the word parent from Old French in the early 15th century. Old French parent could mean both ‘parent’ and
‘relative, kin’, but the English word only retained the first of these two
meanings. In the 17th century, English created the verb to parent from this noun with the meaning ‘to be or act as a parent
to’ (COED). Although the verb is rare, the noun parenting ‘the skill or activity of looking after your own children’
(DOCE), derived from it is a common word. This word has no Spanish equivalent,
though, and it must be translated by roundabout ways, such as crianza de hijos (OSD).
The passive participle of the Latin verb parĕre ‘to give birth to’ was
partus (stem: part-), from which comes the zero-derived (converted) Latin noun partus ‘birth, delivery, labor,
childbirth’. This noun is the source of the Spanish noun parto, with the same
meaning. Other words derived from the same stem part‑ are the nouns partera ‘midwife’, first attested in
the 13th century, and partero ‘male midwife, accoucheur’. In
addition, the woman who gives birth is known as parturienta, a learned noun
derived from the present participle of the Latin verb parturīre ‘to be in labor; to be pregnant’, which is derived
from the verb parĕre by means
of the ‑ur‑(ī‑re)
desiderative suffix.
The adjective corresponding to the Latin noun părēns was părĕntālis, formed by adding
the third conjugation adjectival suffix ‑āl‑(is)
to the noun’s regular stem părĕnt‑.
English borrowed this adjectival as parental
in the 17th century. Its meaning is ‘relating to being a parent and especially
to being responsible for a child’s safety and development’ (DOCE) and it is
found in phrases such as parental responsibility, parental choice, and parental
consent. There is no equivalent adjective in Spanish and thus the English adjective
parental must be translated as de los padres, del padre o de la madre, or paterno
o materno.
Spanish does have a cognate of Eng. parent, a patrimonial descendant of Lat. părĕntem (accusative of pārens), namely the patrimonial word pariente.
However, as is well known, these two words are false friends, since the Spanish
word pariente has come to mean
‘relative’ (‘a person from one’s family’). As we saw for Old French, ‘relative’
was a secondary meaning of the Latin word in Late Latin, but by the time of Old
Spanish that was the only meaning the word pariente
had.
Spanish does not have a word that means ‘parent’ (i.e.
‘mother or father’). In the singular, Eng. parent
translates as either padre ‘father’ or
madre ‘madre’, depending on the
person’s gender, or padre o madre ‘father
or mother’, when we don’t know which one it is. In the plural, however, Eng. parents typically translates as the
plural of the word for ‘father’, namely padres
‘lit. fathers’, as is the custom in Spanish, a custom that is opposed by those who
favor more inclusive language.
However, some speakers of Spanish have borrowed in recent
times the adjective parental, no doubt through English, though it is quite rare.
According to the dictionary, it means ‘of the parents or relatives or related
to them’. Thus, this word has both of the senses that Latin părēns and părĕntālis had. It would seem that this word’s use has become
more common in recent times, undoubtedly due to the influence of Eng. parental and it is found (rarely) in
expressions such as supervisión parental
‘parental supervision’. There is even an adjective derived from parental that is becoming more and more common,
namely monoparental, which has been
created to describe what in English is expressed by the adjective phrase (or
compound) single-parent, as in single-parent family, which translates
as familia monoparental. There is no
doubt that monoparental is a calque cum
loan from the English modifying phrase single-parent.
By analogy with the word monoparental,
the adjective monomarental ‘single-mother’
has been created in recent years to emphasize that most of the time the single
parent is the mother, as in familia
monomarental ‘single-mother family’. Many, however, consider this word a
barbarism and it is not registered in the Academy’s dictionary (DLE).[i]
There is no way to translate the adjective phrase single-father, however. The noun
phrase single parent (as in I am a single parent), also has no
direct translation by this same method. The noun phrases single father and single
mother translate as padre soltero
or madre soltera.
Spanish has a few other words derived from the present
participle stem parent‑, namely the
nouns parentela and parentesco and the verb emparentar. Sp. parentela ‘kinfolk,
relatives, relations’ is a learned borrowing from Lat. parentēla, with the same meaning. It is a synonym of Sp. parientes.
The noun parentesco ‘kinship, relation by
blood’ first appeared in writing in 1275 and it is probably an Occitanism. This
word is used in expressions such as tener
un parentesco lejano ‘to be distant relatives’, no tener parentesco ‘to be unrelated’.
Finally, the Spanish verb emparentar ‘to become
related by marriage’ is formed from the same stem by means of the prefix en‑, along with the first conjugation
endings, so common in the creation of verbs in Spanish (cf. Part I, Chapter 5,
§5.6.1).
More common than this verb is the adjective emparentado/a
(con) ‘related (to)’ derived from the verb’s past participle, as in Ella y yo no estamos emparentados ‘She
and I are not related’.
GO TO PART 2A (Words for Spouses)
GO TO PART 2A (Words for Spouses)
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