Re: Words for "Death"
| From: | Roger Mills <romilly@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, August 7, 2003, 4:39 |
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Arthaey Angosii forwarded:
> >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''
> >
> So, anyone with a conlang like that? He certainly only wants natlang
> examples, but I'm interested in conlangs. :)
>
For some reason, Kash has three related words:
-horem 'to die'; derivs. mean 'dying, moribund; extinguish, turn off (a
device e.g.); killed by accident; immortal
-hombra 'dead'; no derivs., but it would be the base of... -kombra 'death',
derivs. to kill; massacre
These were created very early on, and actually hombra/kombra are
phonologically incorrectly relatives of horem-- they should have -e not -a,
but what the hell........ Since the Kash are relatively advanced medically,
they no doubt know about "brain-dead" and perhaps "near-death experience".
<cue theremin>I don't know if they have the concept of un-dead, though it
would be _trahombra_. ("I see a land where people are dead, but yet
alive..."--line from some ancient GradeZ Vampire movie......)</theremin>