Page:Lytton - The Coming Race (1871).djvu/81

71 CHAPTER X.

word Ana (pronounced broadly Arna) corresponds with our plural men; An (pronounced Am), the singular, with man. The word for woman is Gy (pronounced hard, as in Guy); it forms itself into Gy-ei for the plural, but the G becomes soft in the plural, like Jy-ei. They have a proverb to the effect that this difference in pronunciation is symbolical, for that the female sex is soft in the concrete, but hard to deal with in the individual. The Gy-ei are in the fullest enjoyment of all the rights of equality with males, for which certain philosophers above ground contend.

In childhood they perform the offices of work and labour impartially with the boys; and, indeed, in the earlier age appropriated to the destruction of animals irreclaimably hostile, the