CONLANG Digest - 15 Jan 2000 to 16 Jan 2000 (#2000-17)

> Subject: Miksa
>
> To the store the men went to get groceries
> ak plako thilinosemen ak grocerines
>
> It needs a lot of work and also the above is likely an old example of my
> conlang Miksa.
Haw.  There is to be a Mukaic conlang, loosely based on how I ...altertalk?

Stuff like [sA_kI_k?] for "I'm sorry," "It's all right".
(If I read this x-sampa properly... I need to reread the section on vowels
in that library book I got...  The consonants I can manage but all this
close/open/front/back/middle confuses me still...)

Have any others here made/planned a conlang based on curiosities in their
own speech?  The only one I know of so far is Shanya's SCSL...

> From:    Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
> Subject: Re: Numbers
>
> Muke Tever wrote:
> > But you could pull something like English or German, starting everything
> > over at ten (eight nine ten eleven twelve, but twenty-eight twenty-nine
> > thirty thirty-one thirty-two...  "fifty-twelve" for sixty-two is weird,
but
> > not as weird as "forty-twenty-two"?)
>
> A base 12 system would say "five-twelves and two" for 62
>
> As for English and German, eleven and twelve come from roots meaning
> "one left" and "two left", that is, "one more than ten" and "two more
> than ten".
Yeah, I had looked it up... But the form of "eleven, twelve / elf, zwölf"
being different from "thirteen, fourteen... / dreizhen, vierzehn..."[1]
gives the appearance of base-twelve numbers, or at least the possibility of
"natural-sounding" base-twelve counting without making up new words (don't
we have 'eleventy' in places, for 110?  Tolkien, I think...)

But then, that's my opinion, and I'm probably wrong ;)

[1] If that's ghastly German, please excuse me...

> From:    And Rosta <a.rosta@...>
> Subject: Re: A real education was Re: CHAT: Re: Ebonic Christmas
>
> > It is as unrecoverable as the original meaning of "whore" -- shown by
its
> > Latin cognate "cara"!
>
> I have read (journalists, not scholars) that among mainstream youth in
> contemporary Britain, a word spelt <ho>, < _whore_, means "girl,
girlfriend".
>
> "Whore" is probably used more to mean "easily bribed, easily seduced,
> easily persuaded to do something in return for material pleasures or
> money", nowadays.
I am familiar with that sense of 'whore', but 'ho' here tends to be a
negative term similar to 'whore' or 'slut'.

> From:    Jeffrey Henning <Jeffrey@...>
> Subject: CHAT: Self-Use of Ethnic Insults
>
> > > >I had *no idea* there was anything negative attached to the word
> > > _Jew_ in English,
>
> I often heard "Jew's harp" as a child.  It's "a small instrument
consisting
> of a lyre-shaped metal frame that is held between the teeth and a
projecting
> steel tongue that is plucked to produce a soft, twanging sound." [AHED]
One
> of my next-door neighbors, a surrogate grandfather to me, played it.
>
> As an adult, I've assumed it was offensive, but maybe that's because "Jew"
> alone is so often seen as offensive.  My dictionary doesn't list it as
> vulgar -- is it?
I'm aware of the variant "jaw's harp" for "Jew's harp".  (Had assumed
perhaps the former was the origin, as the instrument apparently has naught
to do with the Jews, but I couldn't find any way to check.)

Ah...  Search comes up with http://www.infoplease.com/ce5/CE026938.html
Is that close to right?


    *Muke!
--
http://i.am/muke  AIM: MukeTurtle  FM: Muke  ICQ: 1936556