Re: Nonsense Words

Arthaey Angosii wrote:
> In getting my computerized lexicon up-to-date (I've past 900 words
> online now!), I came across my half-finished translation of
> Jabberwocky. I'm having a minor crisis deciding whether the "nonsense"
> words belong in my lexicon. At the very least, I'll need to document
> these words *somewhere*, just to make sure I don't coin "real" words
> and make them non-nonsense, but I don't know that they belong in the
> official dictionary.
>
> Has anyone else dealt with this? Opinions?
>
Jabberwocky of course is a special case, but....
My thought would be (1) to put them in a separate section-- perhaps for
loanwords used only in specific contexts (??) or (2) leave them out, but
keep a private list in a file somewhere.

I suppose in translating Jabberwocky, you used native (Asha'ille) resources
to create the nonsense. Some of the portmanteau words could certainly be
compounds of native elements, and explicable. But what native words could
underlie "toves", or "mome raths outgrabe" etc. We aren't even sure what
they mean in "English". These would indeed be nonsense created for...what?
just to sound funny? to fit the metre? to match the rhyme? Unless there's a
native tradition of nonsense poetry, IMO they don't belong in the
dictionary. (Are J. words in any English dictionary? ...not in my Shorter
OED...)

The Kash dictionary has no loanwords from English, and only a couple from
the "Galactic" language-- that's because in _that_ version of the story, the
Gal.Union contacted the Cindu 200+years ago, and has not yet contacted
Earth.  An earlier version had the GU (including Terra) contacting the Kash
in about 2400 C.E., but there was only one Terran on Cindu, so he did not
contribute any loanwords either.  Yet another version had the GU contacting
Terra around 1985 (or 1995, or 2000, depending on how often I update the
fantasy...) and sending us a First Contact Emissary who happens to be a
Kash. He, strictly for his own use, adopts various Terran words into his
vocab.-- so far mainly foodstuffs and (thanks to recent threads) religious
terms-- but none of these, I suspect, will ever make it into the official
dictionary in my lifetime. (BTW he prefers to adapt them from Spanish,
usually, since the phonology most closely matches that of Kash.)

Native Kash or Gwr nonsense poetry, OTOH, is something to think about
:-)))))

Reply