Re: THEORY: Browsing at Borders Public Library

>So here's the conlanger challenge:
>
>What are some of your concultures' "Keywords"?
The name itself of my new-ish conculture, the Swlos, is a good keyword.
The literal translation I tend to use is 'exiles',' and words like
'pariah' or 'outcast' also convey some of the meaning.  But there is a
sense of unworthiness and shame that is hard to translate succinctly.  If
you've read that David Brin book--I believe it's _Brightness Reef_,
although I may be thinking of a different one--this will be clearer.  The
societies in the book are exiles of one sort or another living illegally
on a planet which has been temporarily quarantined in order to allow the
ecosystem to regenerate; not only are the people aware of their heritage
as the descendants of criminals, they consider their own existence a sin
for which they hope to redeem themselves by devolving into an animal
state.

The same general feeling exists among the Swlos.  They are shameful; they
are unworthy; they have been 'cast out into the wilderness,' and rightly
so.

    ___
   )_|_)   Eli Naeher - enaeher@emma.troy.ny.us
  )__|__)
 )___|___)   "A whaleship was my Yale College and my Harvard."
\-,__|_,---/                             --Herman Melville
 \________/