Words for "Death"
| From: | Arthaey Angosii <arthaey@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, August 7, 2003, 3:52 |
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Saw this message on the CogLing mailing list and thought it might make good
fodder for us conlangers:
>Message 1: Words for "death"
>Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 19:22:06 +0000
>From: D. Alan Shewmon <ashewmon@...>
>Subject: Words for "death"
>
>For a medical paper on brain death we are wondering whether there are
>languages with
>
>(1) more than one word for the phenomenon we call ''death''
>(2) no equivalent for the English word ''death''
>
>Re: (1), we are not thinking of joking, euphemistic or substandard
>substitutes for the ''serious'' word for death.
>
>Any help would be greatly appreciated!
>
>D. Alan Shewmon, MD
>Department of Neurology
>David Geffen School of Medicine
>University of California, Los Angeles
So, anyone with a conlang like that? He certainly only wants natlang
examples, but I'm interested in conlangs. :)
The normal verb "to die" is |kriloriv| in Asha'ille. It is a simple
negation of |loriv| "to live" and only applies to the body's death. The
Cresaeans believe that so long as people remember the deceased, they aren't
really dead in any meaningful way. It's only if they are "disremembered"
-- the verb is |kishalníriv| -- that they are truly, tragically lost.
--
AA
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