Re: antonyms: regretful & tasty

> Quoting Garrett Jones <conlang@...>:
>
> > i was going through my wordlist for Minyeva, making antonyms
> for words that
> > didn't have any yet. I came across a couple words that i wanted antonyms
> > for, but i realized that no suitable simple english antonyms
> existed, that
> > were a simple/common root:
>     This is a common problem with dictionaries, and not limited to just
> antonyms. Russian, for instance, doesn't have any words that easily map
> to "cute" or "fun." There are words that will do (for instance,
> "khoroshinkij"
> for a cute baby), but the semantic range that is present in English is not
> there in Russian.
i consider cute to be an essential English word, and i was disappointed with
how much trouble i had to go through when finding an equivalent in
Esperanto. The best anybody could come up with was "charma" = charming, so
that's what i use. For me, 'charming' conjures up in my mind activity on the
subject's part in trying to enchant the viewer, but 'cute' is more the
innocence or diminutiveness of the subject. I'm definitely having a word for
it in Minyeva :~)

> Likewise, Russian's favorite command,
> "davaj/davajtje" can
> be translated as "Come on!" "Give me..." or "Let's..." Or
> "molodjets," another
> favorite word, is ackwardly translated as "fine fellow." The best
> solution is
> to do what you did below, i.e., give lots of examples to give a
> flavor of the
> semantic range.
it's interesting to hear of words that english doesn't have good
translations for. I want Minyeva to have lots of words like that, but
somehow i have to "discover" them on my own or in other languages. Any
suggestions on how to find them in other languages? About the only thing i
can think of is for people to just list the ones they know...

Esperanto: jen - behold, here is (sounds antiquidated in english, but it's
well used in esperanto and is very useful)

>     If you like, you can also create a synonym/antonym dictionary as well,
> just to make it clearer; it's common practice to append a list of words
> divided by category, such as kinship terms, plants and animals, household
> items, etc, so a synonym/antonym section would fit in nicely.
I'm going to do that for Minyeva.

> > tasty vs. bad-tasting?
> > - plusa = tasty, delicious, yummy (plenty of words)
> > - kakco = bad-tasting, unsavory (no suitable simple words here)
>     I like "kakco"! How do you pronounce the "c"? I think the
> reason I like it
> is it's close similarities to "caco-" (Greek "kakos", "bad").
>     :Peter
I believe the sampa equivalent is /S/ (spelt in english as 'sh'). The vowels
are just the spanish equivalents.

--
Garrett Jones
http://www.alkaline.org

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