Re: lexicon

Sally Caves wrote:
> What would be the difference in Teonaht between a
> governor and a ruler?
Classical Uatakassi has only "tigladiz" (note the feminine gender,
masculine wouldn't occur :-)) for any kind of ruler, likewise, only
"uakitani" for any kind of state, ranging from a tiny confederation of
villages to a massive empire, and from an absolute monarchy to a
voluntary federation, and only one word for a subdivision of said state,
"ualaakitani" (lit "unit of a state"), which could mean "county",
"province", etc.  There's also "uabiitani" for any inhabitation, from a
tiny hamlet to a booming metropolis.

I presume that in Imperial times new terms were created, but whether
they were coined from existing vocabulary or borrowed, I've yet to
figure out.

Incidentally, the term "Kassi Empire" is not an accurate translation of
their term.  The term they used is "Uabiimisnani", which is literally
"Land of the [ti-]Misnani", where "timisnani" is a term used for the
Kassi Empress (and only for her, not for foreign empresses), translating
literally as "All-Mother"

> Whatever possessed me to express "reader" and
> "lawmaker" by the same word???  That needs some reconstruction.
Could be a homophone.  Or perhaps some semantic shift.  Perhaps the
"lawmaker" term originally meant something like "advisor (to a king)".
The advisor's job was to read proposed laws and petitions, and
subsequently give the king his advise.  Later political changes caused
these former advisors to become actual lawmakers.

Of course, this would require a constitutional monarchy either in modern
times or in the past to make sense.

--
"There's no such thing as 'cool'.  Everyone's just a big dork or nerd,
you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." -
overheard
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42

Replies