Re: Basic vocabulary when starting a conlang

On Sat, Aug 31, 2002 at 05:39:19PM +0100, bnathyuw wrote:
[snip]
> useful concepts. bac isn't based on a conculture, but
> as i'm atheist it doesn't have a word for god ( it
> borrows specific religions' terms when it needs to
> refer to their deities, and would probably nick the
> latin |deo| if referring to the western concept of god
> )
I am a Christian, and definitely believe in God. Nevertheless, Ebisedian
does not have a word for deity because the Ebisedi do not exist in our
universe.  :-P

> then you have to choose whether to keep the three
> cardinal pronouns . . . ebisedian i know doesn't
> distinguish classic 2nd and 3rd
[snip]

That's right. Depending on how you look at it, you might say Ebisedian
only has 1st person and 3rd person, because its non-1st person pronouns
does somewhat carry a flavor of addressing everyone in the 3rd person.
(Like Conseil in "Around the World in 80 Days".)

Or you might say that Ebisedian is like Japanese, where you always
address, eg., your teacher as "teacher" instead of using a "real" pronoun.
You *could* think of Ebisedian pronouns as terms of address like the
Japanese "teacher", etc., calcified into pronoun-like functions over time.


T

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