Re: Words for "Death"

On Wed, 6 Aug 2003 20:53:35 -0700, Arthaey Angosii <arthaey@...>
wrote:

>Saw this message on the CogLing mailing list and thought it might make good
>fodder for us conlangers:
>
>>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.  :)
Well, there are at least two ways to translate "death" in Zireen languages
(event of dying, state of being dead), but I'm presuming that they're
looking for one or the other of these. It's actually impossible to say
"He's dead, Jim" in a typical Zireen language; if you did say that, a
native speaker would assume you meant he's in a coma or similar state of
deep unconsciousness -- personal pronouns and names can only be used in
reference to living beings. In my prototype Zireen conlang (known
provisionally as "Zircon"), "saita" (an adjective) means "dead" in the
sense "inanimate, lifeless", while "kasi" (a verb) means "to die". So
"death" can be translated either as "dhasaita" (the state of being
lifeless) or "nenkasi" (event of dying), but there's no simple word
specifically meaning "death".

For "He's dead", a Zireen would say "He died".

Vakasi miti peKrimi!
va-kasi mi -ti pe -Krimi
PF-die  ABS-he VOC-Jim
He's dead, Jim!

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