Re: Leveraging Linnaean lingo in a loglang

On 11/26/08, maikxlx <maikxlx@...> wrote:
> The Latin translation thread reminded me of a minor issue that I had
>  encountered while trying to borrow a certain word for my loglang-ish
>  conlang.  The roots in my loglang are mostly 'a posteriori' and largely of
>  Latin origin.  In order to assign a precise meaning, each loglang root that
>  names living things is selected to be morphologically unique, and pegged by
>  definition to the biological taxon to which the Latin (often New Latin)
My gjâ-zym-byn handles most of its biological terms similarly,
borrowing words from Latin mostly at the genus and family
levels, occasionally for species or order.   But it's not a pure
loglang; some species have onomatopoeic or otherwise
idiosyncratic names, and there are a few words for plants
I recognize and perhaps know the common English name
of but don't know (haven't been able to find out) the Latin name
of, or what other plants they're close kin to.
E.g. "vjyn" is the plant called "candle-lily" around here
(Atlanta Ga.), but searches online for "candle-lily" reveal
there are several plants with that common name, in different
familes or genera, none of which look like the plant in my
yard.

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/

Reply