Re: Conlang in-jokes.

I'm not certain that was a joke. Tolkien on several occasions takes
elements of contemporary or historic mythology for his own, implying,
tongue in cheek, that our versions are in fact derivative of his. E.g.,
/the cat and the fiddle/. It would be reasonable enough, had there in
fact been an ancient Numenor, for that legend to evolve into the current
Atlantis myth.

Patrick Littell wrote:

> I don't know if this is something "everyone knows" or not, but I think
> the classic hidden in-joke is from Quenya.  The story of the island of
> Numenor sinking into the sea, "The Downfallen", is the "Akellabeth"...
> I think that's in Adunaic.  But if you translate that into Quenya, you
> get "Atalantë"...
>
> On 8/25/05, *Andreas Johansson* <andjo@free.fr <mailto:andjo@...>>
> wrote:
>
>     Some days ago, I built a little joke into Meghean which I thought
>     pretty neat;
>     the  word _patha_ "disembodied spirit" becomes in the definite
>     accusative
>     plural _phanto_, which of course has a more than accidental
>     similarity to
>     "phantom".
>
>     (The plural formation by infix is somewhat irregular; you'd expect
>     **_phathano_.
>     The same pattern is seen in _guthu_ "death", pl _gunt_.)
>
>     Anyone else have something similar to share?
>
>                                                      Andreas
>
>
>
>
> --
> Patrick Littell
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