Re: Weekly Vocab Fifteenish

>--- Christopher Wright <faceloran@...> wrote:
> > Just got back from college orientation.
> > Roger Mills commented that the themes in my vocab
> > are a bit baroque. Well,
> > I figured that most concultures would have gone
> > through a bow-and-arrow
> > polytheistic stage, but many have not gone through
> > more advanced stages.
*All* of my concultures are in the "bow-and-arrow polytheistic stage (and
don't show any sign whatsoever of advancing past it.)  I've had an
interesting time going over the Weekly Vocab and thinking how I could
*possibly* render some of the concepts into my conlangs.

The most recent of these experiences was in the most recent Vocab released,
where one of the example sentences was "The carpet has a pretty floral
pattern on it."  I'm sure that if I tryed had enough I could come up with
something, like floor-covering, but then how do I make it clear that it is
pictures of flowers and not real ones that are on this floor covering?  My
first thought about the impossibility of rendering into Cwendaso was,
"Carpet?  These people use bear skins and sheepskins for that purpose (and
sleep on and under them as well.)"  Now the Trehelish might actually have
carpets (but probably not ones with floral patterns on them.)  OTOH,
"sandwich," from a sentence in a previous Vocab, I can easily translate
into Cwendaso (as long as you're thinking "sandwich" as in "gyros sandwich"
and not sliced bread), but I cannot translate "sandwich" into
Trehelish.  (You could explain to them what a sandwich is, but they have no
word for it because they don't eat them.)

Isidora

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