Re: a 12th century conlang

At 10:25 25/03/99 +0100, you wrote:
>On Wed, 24 Mar 1999, Herman Miller wrote:
>
>> >"Every imaginary language is a _bricolage_."
>>
>> Hmm, I can't find that word in my French dictionary, which probably means I
>> need a better one. What does he mean by "bricolage"?
>
>My French dictionary is a very old French-Dutch one and it confirms
>what I already thought: literally "do-it-yourself" (Boudewijn says
>the very word "bricolage" is on French do-it-yourself shops) but he
>probably means it in a derogatory sense, "pottering, amateur work".
>
        In French (after all, I'm French, so I'm the best person to know what
"bricolage" means!), "bricolage" means effectively "do-it-yourself". And
even if it's normally a very neutral word, it can have a very bad
connotation, meaning, as you said, "pottering" or "amateur work". In fact,
the derogatory meaning has become so much widespread that it is know the
"normal" meaning of the word, and "bricolage" has become for many people in
France a hobby as weird as, say, conlanging :) .


                                                        Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"Reality is just another point of view."

homepage : http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepage/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html