Re: CONLANG Digest

On Sat, 27 May 2000 02:47:57 -0400, Muke Tever <alrivera@...>
wrote:

>> anain saikau (stripe squirrel) -> anasaik (chipmunk)
>  ^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>I wackyparsed that as 'anakin skaiuaka'.
Well, "anakin" would be a real word, meaning "striped mouse". There isn't a
word "iuaka", but "skaiuaka" could be parsed as "skaiu" + "aka" (an
unlikely but possible combination), which might mean "the set of all
symbols".

A good number of possible sequences of Kisuna sounds are already Kisuna
words or could be interpreted as Kisuna compounds, so it isn't surprising
that "anakin" has a meaning. I wonder how many others there are? "Susan"
means "tiger", although of course it's pronounced [susan] and not [suz@n].
"Kansas" means "sheath". "Sanka" means "kind" or "sort". "Nissan" is "rain
map".

>Anyway, it's making _me_ think more about conlangs as they shouldn't just be
>'relexing' English, and that even supposedly "Western" concepts aren't
>necessarily endemic to "Western culture".
>
>I will have to put more thought into the vocabulary of my next language.
I keep meaning to get around to that, but it's so easy to fall into the
trap of filling in vocabulary gaps with English-based lists, "for the time
being" (which ends up being the way it stays). Maybe when I get one of
those as-yet nameless Azirian languages up and running, I'll be able to
keep it closer to pure.

--
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