Re: water (was:re:sounds like...)

> >many of my own words for "water" (Olaetyan "itrya", Alzetjan
> "djelna",
> >Cispa "tipsic", Jarrda "pean", etc.)
I like "itrya" for water.  I'd steal it except that Tokana doesn't allow

clusters like "tr" (there's no "r" sound in Tokana at all, in fact).


> >I really don't have any idea why words like "aqua" and "shui" sound
> more
> >watery to me than, say, "tubig" or "hudor", but they do.
Tokana has several words for water.  Water as a substance or element
is "hum", a word which I'm supremely unhappy with and will have to
change one of these days.  The other two words for water are better:
Like animals and plants, the Tokana classify water as either 'wild' or
'domestic', where the former is referred to as "kunu" and the latter as
"nan".
"Nan" is water which has been sanctioned for human use in a special
'water
harvest' ceremony ("sikespot nan").  "Kunu" is all other sources of
water.
Among the Tokana it is taboo to drink from or bathe in "kunu" (a
mountain
stream, for example) without performing certain rituals.  Similar
rituals
are required when fishing, hunting, gathering wild plants, clearing new
farmland, or otherwise exploiting undomesticated resources.

Matt.