Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: Ancient conlang

From:Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Friday, January 16, 2004, 18:18
On Thursday, January 15, 2004, at 09:40 PM, Costentin Cornomorus wrote:

> --- Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote: > >>> Circumlocutions. For "hominid", use >>> "manlike"; for "chimp" use "monkey". >>> >>> Email could be "lightning courrier" or >>> similar. >> >> Why? > > Because we understand what is entailed, while a H > speaker will not. He'd probably know what a > message is, but not what an email is. His > messages are hacked into clay and baked
A slightly unreal scenario, I think. I don't understand why anyone would want to do this? And surely by fixing the Hittite vocabulary at what we have recovered and reverting to (strange) circumlocutions, we are re-enforcing the erroneous notion of "primitive language" that Paul was arguing against. [snip]
>> We've plundered Greek and Latin in order to >> extend our vocabulary, >> and borrowed 'chimpanzee' from some west >> African source. I am not >> aware of any evidence that Hittite couldn't >> have similarly extended its vocabulary. > > Apparently so! I thought the whole point of > John's comment was to make the thing > understandable for a speaker of an ancient > language.
That is _not_ how I understood Paul's reply to Gary; I assumed John was simply making the observation that Hittite would have to have these vocabulary items for Paul's translation to be made.
> Not just providing a loan word that > fits the phonology. I guess if all you want is a > simple loan, I suggest iimeyallas.
_I_ want nothing. I was merely making the observation that it is my belief that all natlangs have the resources to adapt and extend their vocabulary. Nor, if you read my mail properly, did I ever say the only way to do this is by having loan words which fit the phonology (as, e.g. 'chimpanzee' in English). Languages have a variety of ways of extending vocabulary; I do not see why Hittite should be any different in this respect. Ray =============================================== http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown ray.brown@freeuk.com (home) raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk (work) =============================================== "A mind which thinks at its own expense will always interfere with language." J.G. Hamann, 1760

Reply

Costentin Cornomorus <elemtilas@...>