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Re: Language Naming

From:Adam Parrish <myth@...>
Date:Friday, January 22, 1999, 4:26
On Thu, 21 Jan 1999, Sheets, Jeff wrote:

> So the general convention for natlangs is naming it after the original > country/nation? Are there any major exceptions to this? I think Cherokee > would be one, isn't Tsa-La-Gi the Cherokee word for their tribe? Do they > actually HAVE a name for their language? I'm being specific about natlangs, > but I'm interested in knowing what General rules are used to name any given > language. From what I can tell most languages are based on their homeland. > Are there any other ways that the native speakers of a language name it? >
Though I don't speak with any scientific authority whatsoever, I don't think there would be much limitation on how natives name their language. The perfect example is for me the most obvious: I live in the United States, but for some reason I call my language English. FWIW, and from a more conlang-related point of view, my conlang Doraya wasn't originally named that way (intrafictionally, at least). Most of the native speakers still call it _raeyl mof_ ('The Sea Language'). After some of the speakers of this language left their homeland because of religious and political persecution, the refugee government (after a small spelling reform) renamed it _doraya_ ('Star-Language') to emphasize the new political, cultural, and geographic differences between the two groups. (Actually, that's just the current story I use to justify the continued use of the word _doraya_ to identify the language -- a word which, though it seemed nice when I first started working on the language, is horribly incorrect under the current grammar. <g>) -- Adam Parrish "A friend of mine once told me that the myth@inquo.net best way to understand teenagers was to http://www.inquo.net/~myth/ think of them as constantly on LSD. It was good advice." -- Mary Pipher