Re: Conlanging as a personal thing

On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 07:06:09PM -0500, Sally Caves wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>
>
> > 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.
>
> I've missed, obviously, some very interesting threads.  Nomail is the
> culprit.
Try:

http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?S2=conlang&q=j3li&s=&f=&a=&b=

These are some of the interesting threads where _gii'j3li_ was mentioned,
including this wacky story about scientists turned entertainers, which I
obviously made up on the spot when I wrote the email. :-P

[snip]
> > 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.
>
> Admirable.  I'm struggling with the same challenge.  You'd think that the
> more roots I had the easier it would be to produce new vocabulary.  To some
> extent that is largely true, but now I have become super conscious about not
> making everything in Teonaht an equivalent with everything in English, and
> lexicon-building has become so much more laborious.  There is not just a
> word for vegetables, the Teonaht lump fruits and roots together in one
> category, and stalks and leaves in another.
Cool. I'll have to keep that in mind when I start coining words for
foodstuffs. Right now, Ebisedian has only an impoverished vocabulary of
edibles and drinkables. :-( (One main barrier in this area is that I
haven't decided on the diet of the Ebisedi... nor even what kinds of
comestibles exist in their world!! I'm certain that that makes it hard to
coin words for foods. :-P)

One thing that helped me somewhat with the tedious rate of lexicon
building is to coin related words and derived words at the same time I
introduce a new word. Eg. when I add a word for "more", I also coin a word
for "less", "most", "least", etc.. And I wrote an entire document on
anatomical terminology when I decided to name body parts, and I must've
introduced over 100 words just by that alone. :-) (It's not just 100
anatomical terms; for each anatomical term, I also reverse-derive root
words, related words, factorise prefixes and suffixes and extrapolate
where they came from, etc..)

> A farlarop is a hurled thing (just to note your last example!), but also
> someone hit by the hurled thing!
Interesting idea. The closest Ebisedian gets to this is lame puns like
_kaci'_ [ka"tsi], a plant with red flowers, and _kacii'_ [ka"tsi:], a
woman's head.

> Both have connotations of the stupidity of temper tantrums and how what
> goes around comes around.  So farlarop can also mean "bad karma."  (It
> has no relation to phalarope, a very nice waterbird, I think).
Ahh. In Ebisedian, there's a word, _vyy'i_, which is a scientific term,
the name of a physical phenomenon, and also a swear word simultaneously.
:-) It refers to a swirling, destructive phenomenon in the Ferochromon,
which is scientifically interesting in its own right, but the phenomenon
is used as a means of garbage disposal by the Ebisedi; so over time, it
has acquired the connotations of refuse, garbage, and waste. Eventually,
it became a swear word (while still remaining a scientific term) denoting
utter worthlessness, or the equivalent of "go to hell!".

So now the meaning of the word is extremely sensitive to context; asking
someone to "go to the _vyy'i_"  could mean either "please take the trash
out" or "go to hell", depending on the context and tone of voice.
Dangerously ambiguous!

> And then the non-volitional and stative verbs give all sorts of meanings
> that don't have exact equivalents in English: like what is
> non-volitional giving?  Relinquishing?  Not exactly.  It has a more
> positive connotation than that, but one that is done in a state of
> inactivity.
Reminds me of the introvertive verbs in Ebisedian. Ebisedian introvertive
verbs mainly denote psychological events and actions; but many of the
verbs are cognate with physical verbs, and have metaphorically equivalent
meanings.

For example, _la'zi_ is cognate with _le's_, "to go"; it means to advance
to the next topic, or to explore a particular subject in one's mind (i.e.
"go" to a subject). Then _da'mi_, cognate with _ta'ma_, "to speak", means
to speak in one's mind, i.e., to think. But not just any kind of thinking;
it's a particular form of thinking thought of as speaking within oneself.
As opposed to _za'ti_, cognate with _zota'_ ("to look at"), which means to
mentally fixate upon a certain goal or object. (It would be translated to
English as "to think about" as well, which doesn't quite capture its
meaning.) And both are distinct from _va'ti_, cognate with _fa't3_ ("to
see"), which means to perceive, to realize, to understand the significance
of what one sees. Or from _ra'si_, cognate with _ree's_ ("to run", "to
move swiftly"), which indicates an intense mental marathon.

[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.
>
> How can you think in a grammar without the words?  Teonaht has a big
> vocabulary that takes practice remembering, and a backwards syntactical
> structure with lots of exceptions and idiomatic phrases that are difficult
> to work out even in an English transcription.
[snip]

Ebisedian grammar may be unusual, but it doesn't have that many
exceptions. Besides, to write Ebisedian, one has to think in terms of noun
roles; it's almost like a state of mind where every object you're
describing takes on one of the 5 roles (corresponding to the 5 noun
cases). It's almost spontaneous to assign roles to a referent which I have
trouble associating with its noun.

As for working with English transcriptions... Ebisedian is just impossible
to manage that way. It's almost guaranteed to get everything all wrong
unless you think in Ebisedian. :-) It's probably harder to work with
English transcriptions than directly with Ebisedian itself.


T

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