Proper nouns in Conlangs
| From: | LeoMoser(Acadon@Acadon.com) <acadon@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, October 18, 2000, 18:30 |
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How various languages handle proper nouns is
a whole study in itself. And an issue in conlanging.
From: "Karen Robinson" <krobinso@...>
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2000 11:09 AM
> Mangiat wrote:
>
> > Interestingly Italian had a very strong tendence to italianize
everything
> > foreign, even names (In philosophy, i.e., I've just studied quys as
Tommaso
> > Moro, Francesco Bacone and Renato Cartesio, aka Thomas More, Francis
Bacon
> > and René Décartes).
The problem in China is vastly more difficult,
since such names must become "names" as
defined by Chinese convention -- beginning
with a one-syllable surname from a limited
list of possible names.
> Well, the English speakers can hardly complain - I studied Christopher
> Columbus in school, not Cristoforo Colombo. (Is that the correct
> spelling?)
In Esperanto, all names of persons and places
(proper nouns) must have the same ending -o.
So a book of geographical names would have
hundreds of thousands of names -- all ending
the same. So would the phonebook. This is
not the case in any natural language.
LEO