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Re: USAGE: Name adaptation (fuit: GSF revisited)

From:Benct Philip Jonsson <conlang@...>
Date:Wednesday, May 16, 2007, 7:49
Dirk Elzinga skrev:
 > Okay, at the risk of starting a really annoying thread
 > ("Ooh, ooh! <waves hand in air> Do mine!"), how is Salt
 > Lake City handled? Is it translated (which makes a lot
 > of sense to me), or do they just slap (i)ensis to the
 > end of it?
 >
 > Dirk

I can't answer for Church latin, but in Sohlob it's
definitely translated, as a Great Lake, the Sohl, is
culturally, religiously and economically significant to the
Sohloçan. So it would be:

Classical Sohlob: _kerbsohlæl_, Kidilib: _pirjsohrsel_,
Linjeb: _kiltsolheil_, or CS: _paçsohlæl_, K:
_paçsohrsel_, L: _pasolheil_, dependent on whether you
say'salt' or 'brine'.

I'm not sure what sandhi combos like _js, çs_ would
provoke. Maybe it differs with 'lectal factors, and maybe it
wouldn't be expressed in writing either (unlike the word CS:
_hel_, K: _sel_, L: _heil_ 'city' which as a 'suffix' i n
placenames has become subject to vowel harmony in CS and K.)

The Sohloçan would probably understand "Salt Sohl" to
refer to the Ocean, since the Ocean and the Great Lake are
contrasted as the Black Sohl and the White Sohl in their
culture. To make the distinction clear one might replace
CS: _sohl_, K: _sohr_, L: _sol_ with CT: _hlum_, K:
_hlum_, L: _slym_, which is a more neutral and less
charged termfor 'lake.'

 > On 5/15/07, caeruleancentaur
 > <caeruleancentaur@...> wrote:
 >>
 >> >Matahaniya ang Benct Philip Jonsson <conlang@...>:
 >>
 >> > Indeed. To translate rather than transliterate names is
 >> > a sometimes occiurring symptom of the artlanger
 >> > disease.
 >>
 >> This discussion on translation and transliteration
 >> reminds me of the way the Catholic Church translates the
 >> names of see cities into Latin. (I'm only familiar with
 >> the U.S. dioceses.)

 >>
 >> There must be a committee in the Vatican!

They apparentlyfollow the models of how placenames in
England and other parts of Europe are Latinized. i wonder if
English names in _-wich_ *really* are from Latin _vicus_.
It's nice anyway!

BTW It's always strange to me when spellings that are
clearly malformed in Latin, like _Dodge_ are preserved. I'd
rather see _Dodex_ on the analogy of Judge :: Iudex! :-) or
at least _Dogius_, like _voyage_ became _viagium_ in
Medieval Latin (it's actually from _viaticum!) One recent
example which somewhat ticked me off was Homo floresiensis,
which obviously should have been floriensis. Can't those bio-
, paleoonto-, whateverists take a course in Latin word
building, or at least ask a Latinist? :-(

/BP

Reply

R A Brown <ray@...>