Re: OT: Conlangea Dreaming

On Tue, 10 Oct 2000, Robert Hailman wrote:

> > If I ever have kids (unlikely prospect) they're getting American *and*
> > Korean names, and they can pick what they want to use.
>
> I know someone who's parent's did that, his English name is Anthony and
> his Chinese name eludes me at the moment, but there is one. His parents
> call him by his Chinese name, I know that much.
Happens a lot with the Asian-Americans I've known.  My parents chose not
to, or weren't aware of it.  <shrug>

> > YHL, who dislikes languages that care about sex/gender distinctions out
> > of habit
>
> ObConlang: In Ajuk, there is a cop-out as far as gender goes: for
> pronouns, adjectives, numbers, verb cojugation, etc. the affix "-ap-" is
> male, the affix "-ip-" is female, and the affix "-ot-" is for inanimite
> objects, and the fourth affix is "-ep-", which can be used in situations
> where the gender isn't known, is irrelevant, or the speaker chooses to
> leave it out. Also, the third person with "-ep-" is used in situations
> where we use "one" in English...
I like.  :-)  In Chevraqis you theoretically could get confused between
two people with the same name, one male, one female.  OTOH you'd get
confused anyway even if they were the same sex.  Epithets (?) like "the
younger" or "the calligrapher" or "the soldier" are pretty common anyway.

The one thing that gives me a headache is the fact that monks are
Asian-like monks, not Western-like monks, but in the story there's a
senior monk who's also a woman, and I'm worried it'll confuse readers.
ObConlang, the Chevraqis for monk is probably "one who seeks
enlightenment."  (Stupid-obvious, but hey.)

YHL