Soil science

The third entry is la roccia madre, and the English for it is not « mother rock ». Soil scientists write « parent material », or « parent rock » where the material really is rock, and the choice is not a matter of taste: English shares out a job that Italian leaves to a single word. Madre, standing after another noun and still a noun itself, marks the thing that something else came out of, and it does that everywhere. La casa madre is the head office, which English calls the « parent company ». La lingua madre is the « mother tongue ». La scheda madre is the « motherboard », and la nave madre the « mother ship ». One Italian word across four compounds, and two English ones handed out by an old habit: « mother » where the image is still a body that gives birth, « parent » where the relation has gone abstract and become a matter of ownership or origin. A reader who translates roccia madre by feel will reach for the warm word, and the geologist will not recognise it.