Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: TRANS: Happiness (& a question for Christophe)

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Monday, October 29, 2001, 11:58
En réponse à Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...>:

> On Friday, October 26, 2001, at 05:02 , Henrik Theiling wrote: > > (Christophe, a question for you or other native French speakers is > buried > under "yna," below...) >
Nice to feel needed :)) .
> > yna: > - could be used as "who?" > - to address someone you're not familiar with (but not quite as > obviously > rude as "hey, you over there...") > - to refer to "peripheral" objects or events that come up in the course > of > the > conversation > - to refer to people who aren't present (mostly equivalent to 3rd > person, > but > if you're giving generic directions, say in a cookbook or something, > it > might > be translated as a 2nd person--I think of this as similar to the > French > use > of the infinitive-as-imperative, if I remember > correctly--Christophe?) >
I think so. We also use it in warning panels ("ne pas fumer": no smoking*). It's the normal way to mark written "advice" (written imperative forms look much too familiar). *Funny offtopic note: in French, "smoking" means: "tuxedo", so imagine the surprise of a French man knowing no English and seeing the panel "no smoking" on a wall :)) .
> na (the non-generic form): > - to address someone you know > - often to address people who are present > - to refer to people who aren't present but who are the focus of > conversation, > or about whom the speaker feels/thinks strongly > - to give directions to specific people > > I know, it's horrendously fuzzy, but in a lot of ways this is a fuzzy > sorta language. >
My Astou also has a strange system of personal pronouns. It doesn't make the difference between 1st, 2nd and 3rd person, but between "I", "non-I" and "non- person", at least in singular. "non-I" can be both 2nd or 3rd person, as well as "non-person". But the first one seems to refer to something/somebody relevant to the discussion, while "non-person" doesn't necessarily. Still, I don't know much about the difference. Astou is a dead language (even in its history :)) ) like Latin and Sanskrit, and thus it's study depends on the written materials about it. And they are not very numerous unfortunately.
> to guide the semantics. Hence, for <ferun> it becomes > ! invent, create > ? search, quest > . find, discovery >
I like the semantic derivations it makes. Christophe. http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

Reply

Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...>