Re: Words and meanings (creating vocab)

On Fri, Jan 10, 2003 at 12:35:42PM -0800, Arthaey Angosii wrote:
> Emaelivpar Chris Wright:
> >> And speaking of this, how does everyone else make their vocabularies? I
> >> usually do it by translation, since it's fun, if tedious, and the words
> >> are instantly useful, or at least used.
>
> T'adáshavpar Jonathan North Washington:
> >That's the way I find most efficient.
>
> I also find translating the best way to make new words.  I usually find at
> least one category of words that I don't have at all in my language yet,
> and so I have to stop and think about how the conculture would deal with
> those concepts, not just those words.  I often get sidetracked into making
> at least twice as many supporting culture words as words used in the actual
> passage.
Hey, that sounds familiar. :-) I do that too.

> But I had trouble finding good things to translate.  I've done the Babel
> Text and the North Wind and the Sun (which I'm typing into Shoebox now!
> The automatic interlinears are _nice_), but I don't know what else to do.
The translation relays are good source of vocab, too. I owe much of
Ebisedian's current lexicon to the relays. :-)

[snip]
> What else have you people translated?  If you've done poetry, how do you
> handle rhyme/meter/connotations, which poetry tends to rely on much more
> heavily than does prose?
[snip]

I've *tried* poetry, but I'm no poet, so the Ebisedi would probably laugh
me off the stage if I showed them the little that I did write. :-P

Maybe writing short stories will help. I've tried, and I've been
roadblocked right at the beginning, because apparently Ebisedian has large
vocabulary gaps in describing common phenomena! :-)


T

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