Re: Lexicons and Langauge Borrowing
From: | Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> |
Date: | Tuesday, March 16, 1999, 21:16 |
Irina Rempt wrote:
> I'm curious how other people come up with words - I know some people
> who can sit down and *make* them, but if I try that I usually have to
> throw away ninety-five percent of the result. Most of the time, if I
> need a word for something, I dip into my stock of unused stems and
> consider them one by one until I hit one that fits.
I usually just make up words, at random (altho they sometimes show
unconcious influences from natlangs). Sometimes, I'll adapt an English
word or a name, with a certain distortion protocol. For instance, I
have a friend named "Laura", and so I adapted her name, as sla'na (s- =
gender 3), meaning "friend". No specific reason for r --> n, just a
slight "disguising". To adapt her name to my phonology would probably
be tLu'dya (t- = gender 1), /tlu.ra/
--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
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