Re: Introducing Paul Burgess and his radioactive imagination!

3/8/03 10:04:14 AM, Sally Caves <scaves@...>
wrote:

>Oh, you guys with your elephantine memories!  Yry
invidyihs!!!!
>
>I can
>write simple sentences without consulting my lexicon,
but it's sentences
>like "I don't know how to get my sister to see
reason!" or "I wish somebody
>would tell me what channel Law and Order is on" that
have me scrambling
>around for the right word order.  And then there's
"channel" to invent.

Sally...

In Hermetic we would say, "Vopfasicis yo mna dhnampi mna
vasoth mna is cijvirilis 'mna Lao mna cai Nampo.'"

More or less literally, "Would-that-would-cause-to-know
to-me somebody the channel the at plays-on-television
'Law and Order.'"

At least, that's how it comes to me, right off the top
of my head. :-)

"Vopfasicis" is optative mood, causative aspect, of
"psiciso," "to think" or "to know." (One of those
"naive" word roots I came up with at age 13-- Note also
"mna lao" for "law" or "(imperial) legal code.")

If you want to use one of those dang subordinate verbs,
a more formal way of saying the same thing would be,
"Vopfasicis yo mna dhnampi mna vasoth 'Laov cai Nampov'
cijviriliso mna is."

And the Hermetic term "mna vaso," for "channel" or
"level," came to me my junior year in college, 1976-77,
University of Wisconsin-Madison, sitting at the desk in
my dorm room with a fluorescent light on, while drawing
a political cartoon about then-president Jimmy Carter.

See, I told you there's often a story associated with
points of vocabulary and grammar in Hermetic! :-)

Now I've got to run-- due to my schedule, I doubt I'll
be back online before Tuesday evening.

"Icnaothis vacig!"
("Take it easy!")

Paul

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     E-mail   paul@paulburgess.org
     Website  http://www.paulburgess.org
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