Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Ghost net (was Language, Religion,and an information quest (or somesuch))

From:Jeffrey Henning <jeffrey@...>
Date:Wednesday, November 10, 1999, 5:59
Mia Soderquist <tuozin@...> baccomunu:

> On a bit of a tangent, "ghost" would certainly be > poetic, since there is another word for a deceased > person, and the deceased are thought to be alive > but no longer physical, and also omnipresent.
Funny you mention this. On the commute home, I was wondering how "ghost" might be phrased in Dublex. I've phrased "soul, spirit" in the past as 'devbad', "divine body-part", and I tried compounds with that, but I didn't have a ghost of a chance. I think it might be 'mortperdaev', "dead-person-god-diminutive", or 'malmortper', "pejorative dead person". Thinking of "undead", maybe it would be 'miortper', "death-opposite-person". You could populate a ghost town with all the forms I've rejected. Or it could be 'safarmort', "traveling death". I think the best might be 'mortdaev', "dead-god-diminutive". I think I'll have to keep working on it. The ghost story in English is interesting. Many different senses of ghost are at work: a ghost crab is a white crab, a ghost net is a drifting fishing net that kills dolphins and other marine life, a ghost town is an abandoned town, a ghost story is a supernatural story and a ghost word is a word created through error ('dord', anyone?). Compounds seem to permit a lot of metaphorical drift. So what are your ghost words? Literally and figuratively? Regards, Jeffrey