Re: Conlanging as a personal thing

On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 05:47:04PM -0500, Sally Caves wrote:
[snip]
> First clause, easy-peasy.  Second clause: didn't have a word for
> "interesting."  !!!!  Looked for it in my less than adequate on-line
> lexicon.  So I had to substitute "meaningful."  Now this is a hedge;
> Teonaht is definitely not ready for even "half" communicability (if you take
> my new definition of communicability into consideration), in that what I
> wanted to express in English I found inexpressible in Teonaht and had to go
> around it.
Ebisedian is different enough from English that a lot of English concepts
are currently inexpressible in Ebisedian. But OTOH, the reverse is true:
there are a lot of Ebisedian concepts which are very difficult to express
in English! I've already mentioned _i're_ in another thread; its cousin
_kreme_ [kr&m&] (not [kri:m]! :-P) is another example. And of course, the
(in)famous _gii'j3li_, of which I've mentioned several times already in
the past.

>  But I think that an equivalent for "interest" in T. will have to
> include the concept of "significance."  Something is interesting only
> insofar as it is significant to you, right?
Raises an interesting question... that of consistency of a new word with
existing vocabulary. One of my problems with building Ebisedian's lexicon
is my perfectionist insistence that its words must result from its own
culture, rather than be mappings from English. As a result, there a large
gaping holes in the vocabulary, even though I already have such obscure
distinctions as _be'jh_, to give a personal gift; vs. _thech'_, to pass
something to another (like in a ballgame);  vs. _nge'jh_, to carelessly
throw something towards someone in an off-hand way; vs. _th0're_, to hand
in, or submit a document.

[snip]
> From: "Mike Ellis" <nihilsum@...>
> > I would put it up at 10 000 or even higher. Rhean has over 2000 words but
> > I still don't think there's been a translation I've done for which I
> > didn't have to make up a few more.
But it all depends on *which* words, you see. Ebisedian's lexicon is
currently at 442 entries, but it still lacks a lot of basic concepts (eg.,
there are two words for happiness, but none for sadness; you can name
individual fingers and toes, but you can't tell the difference between
your lower back and your tummy; there is a word for dreaming, but none for
sleeping; you can say "tall" but not "short"; etc..)

> And remembering them all, of course.  T has a pretty good-sized lexicon
> for an invented language, but they are not in circulation.  The only
> thing that will make me remember all of them, and give me the
> communicability that I want, is to write it, write it, and write it, the
> way Mao does. And about different things.  I can't think it, think it,
> think it, the way Paul does.  I'm still in the writing stage.
[snip]

I have the opposite problem. I can easily think in Ebisedian grammar, but
I stutter and stumble over the limited vocabulary that I can remember.


T

--
Unix was not designed to stop people from doing stupid things, because that
would also stop them from doing clever things. -- Doug Gwyn

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