Re: Dievas dave dantis; Dievas duos duonos

Jonathan Chang wrote:
>
> In a message dated 2000:09:18 2:33:51 PM, joerg.rhiemeier@FREENET.DE writes:
>
> >The word _Eru_ means something like "The One"; it can only be used for
> >a monotheistic deity and doesn't have a plural.  "A god" would be _baln_,
> >"gods" _beln_, literally "powers".
> >
>
>     Intriguing... In Viivo, one can refer to _Diio_ and it means - roughly-
> <God(s)>.
> Sorta like the English words "sheep," "wood," fish", ... the noun-forms in
> Viivo are neither plural or singular (till modified otherwise).
>     I like these differences in "semantic space"... it's in these details
> that a language - NatLang or ConLang - express highly different worldviews...
Yes; for a more mundane matter, see my reply on Padraig's translation of
the "Dievas" sentence into Talarian, where he speaks of a "minor
semantic
shift" from bread to meat, which is a warp from edible to (virtually)
inedible in Nur-ellen.  (Not that Elves could not digest meat; of course
they can as they are humans, but they detest it.)

>     Jeorg's Nur-ellen brought to mind (my mind) Vikings before they were
> fully Christianized.
What underlies the distinction between _Eru_ and _baln_, pl. _beln_,
is a belief system that is virtually the same as that described in
Tolkien's "Silmarillion".  _Eru_ is the One, the creator-god of the
Universe
(hence the kenning _Iluvad`r_ "Father of the Universe"); the _Beln_
are the "Powers" (in Quenya: _Valar_), a sort of mighty angelic spirits
which were born out of the thought of Eru before the World was created,
assisted Eru in the Song of Creation, and tend the world in the name of
The One.

(To those who haven't read "The Silmarillion": it can be described as a
sort of Christian-Pagan-Buddhist mix, quite original and very
attractive.)

A deity of a kind of which more than one exist can thus only be a
_baln_,
not _Eru_; but the Judaeo-Christian-Muslim god is indeed _Eru_.

A plural of _Eru_ would be absurd etymologically, anyway, as the word
contains
the root *er, meaning "one and only".

Joerg.