Re: Weekly Vocab Fifteenish

At 11:51 PM 9/17/03 -0400, Roger Mills wrote:
>Isidora Zamora wrote:
> > *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.
> >
>One has sometimes to make certain...adjustments...to the weekly vocabs.
>:-)))
I've seen people making such adjustments...such as a tofu-like substance
for cheese recently.  (Was that you?  I simply can't keep track of who has
what language(s).  If it was you, then what color are the Kash, because I
remember that the face was colored blackish with something like
squid-ink.  Cwendaso skin is light-medium brown with a very distinctly --
and distinctive -- gray cast to it)  (If the Cwendaso language were
sufficiently developed for me to attempt Weekly Vocabs, then I probably
could have translated the cheese sculpture one since they keep sheep and
eat a lot of cheese, and they also carve wood, but the story would have
been even more ridiculous in Cwendaso than it was in English, and I would
have been hard-put to come up with the difference in color between the
garment and the flesh of the sculpture since all of their cheese is
white.  Since I eat a lot of sheep's milk cheese myself, I know quite well
that there are many varieties, each with a different flavor, but they're
all white or off-white.  I probably would not have thought of artifically
coloring it with something, even though I know quite well that cheddar gets
its yellow-gold color from anatto.)

I've seen other such adjustments, too.  My husband and I were trying to
figure out how to render the idea of "anarchist" into other
languages.  "Lawless" doesn't really do for all languages (though it might
for Cwendaso), because it might well have the connotation of
"criminal."  (In Church Slavonic, "lawless ones" has the very definite
meaning of "sinners."  "People without kings" (in Cwendaso) doesn't work,
because the Trehelish (and Nidirino) have representative democracy and
threfore no kings, but they are anything but anarchists.  The Trehelish
(and Nidirino) have a strong concept of central and local government, so it
would probably be easiest to translate the word into their languages, but
explaining the *idea* to a person in those culture would be another
matter.  I don't think that they'd understand *why* or *how* someone could
believe that.  Even their criminals don't not believe in government; they
just break the laws.  (Then there's also the issue of utopian anarchists
who simply want to live in peace and harmony with everyone and believe that
that can best be accomplished without government.  I did a paper on
anarchism way back in middle school; based on historical evidence, I
concluded that utopian anarchism was a nice idea, but it always failed in
practice.)  What did you use in Kash for "anarchist"?

> > "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.)
>
>I had exactly that problem once in Indonesia.  The group of students I was
>with gave me blank stares (and these were quite Westernized people), until
>one clever fellow  went running off, and retunred with some Chinese _Bao_
>(steamed pork buns), which saved the day.
Very clever fellow.  What were you teaching?

Is Is Indonesia a very muti-cultural country?  My father-in-law's
girlfriend is Indonesian, and I get something of that impression from some
of the things that she has said.  (I know that Singapore is quite
muti-cultural because we homeshcool and use Singapore Math with our
chidren.  Great math program.  It's the mathematics program used in the
public schools in Singapore, and you can tell from the contents of the
ubiquitous story-problems that Singapore is quite multi-cultural.)

>There is a word for sandwich (analogue) in Kash, made up IIRC from
>bread+stuffed or maybe bread+meat. It's probably more like a bao; the Kash
>aren't big eaters of leavened wheat-like products.
In Cwendaso the word is "folded bread," and I came up with the idea after
seeing the Weekly Vocab.  They eat a leavened flatbread much like
(pocketless) pita or foccacia.  You take some of last night's leftover stew
(*only* if it was a very thick and chunky stew, because the last thing
anyone wants is to start out the day with food all over themselves) or
leftover chunks of roasted meat, place it in the middle of a round of
flatbread, fold the bread in half, and eat it.  The Trehelish have loaves
of bread much like ours, and they slice them with a knife and put butter on
the slices, but they don't make sandwiches.  (OTOH, maybe my third culture,
the Nidirino, who live with the Trehelish, might eat something like and
sandwich and Trehelish could have a loan-word for it.  Or maybe
not.  Sandwiches are a convienece, not a neccessity.)  It's amazing the
different things that are all called "sandwiches."  You have the gyros
sandwich type made of a folded-over flatbread.  Then there's the sort of
sandwich you get when you cut a pocket-pita in half and stuff it.  Of
course, there is the Wonderbread sandwich used in America.  Then there is
also the so-called open-faced sandwich eaten in Scandinavia.  These 4
things don't bear too much resemblance to each other.

Isidora

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