Re: Cookbook

On Sun, 1 Jul 2001 14:05:57 -0700, Aidan Grey <frterminus@...> wrote:

>  Okay, this has been tried before, but I'm hoping
>there's more interest in it now. I'd like to put
>together a conculture/conlang cookbook. here's what
>I'm looking for:
>
>  - some info about the culture
>  - some info about their foods (e.g. Szechuan uses
>lots of fish and tends toward the spicy end. Of
>course, I'd like more info than this...)
>  - at least three characteristic or traditional
>recipes, in the Conlang as well as an adaptation into
>English.
 Well, I have a strong interest in food, so this sounds great to me. I've
barely designed the conculture of my favorite and most long-running conlang,
Caryatic, but since I pictured them as having a culture somewhat similar to
our Greeks and Romans I imagine their food would be somewhat similar (see
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Apicius ). Nevertheless, I have given the
names of a disproportionate number of edible plants and such, so maybe I'll
post those later. This would be my first post to actually be on topic ;)
 Anyway, something to worry about when translating recipes: different
languages handle cooking instructions differently. English uses the
imperative, French I would imagine uses the infinitive. I'm told that German
uses the subjunctive in the impersonal (mann soll... excuse my terrible
German grammar and orthography, as I have the Yiddish me' zol in mind ;) ),
and that Hungarian uses the first person!
 In my experience, Ancient Roman recipes fluctuate between 2nd singular
present subjunctive, present indicative, future indicative, and present
imperative and future imperative, often even within the same recipe! The
Akkadian recipes I've read use the imperative... I think (I don't really
speak the language!), except that there's one where the imperative alternates
with a first person form, as if the recipe is a transcription of a chef
dividing the labor with his assistant!
 So... just keep all this mess in mind while you're translating your
recipes!

JDM

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