Re: lexicons

-----Original Message-----
From: dunn patrick w <tb0pwd1@...>
To: Multiple recipients of list CONLANG <CONLANG@...>
Date: Wednesday, March 31, 1999 7:25 AM
Subject: Re: lexicons


>On Tue, 30 Mar 1999, Gary Shannon wrote:
>
>> What I've been doing with Tazhi is discovering one single root, and
applying
>> all the various prefixes and suffixes that Tazhi has to derive related
>> words.  That way I get about a dozen new words in my dictionary for every
>> new root I discover.
>>
>> --gary.
>
>I do something similar with Telu'at'a.  For instance, the suffix -'e means
>"one who performs the action of", while the suffix -le means "tool by
>which ones performs the action of."  But isn't it a little artificial to
>do this slavishly?  After all, English has "write" and "writer" but not
>"writer (i.e. pencil)".  We have "cook", but no "cooker (i.e. one who
>cooks)".
>
Ah, but Tazhi is the lost language of the equally lost civilization of
Atlantis <hehe> and those crafty Atlaneans were infinitely logical and
consistent. The "mythology" surrounding Tazhi is that it is the modern day
language of a parallel universe earth where Atlantis never sank, Rome stole
their technology and conquered the world 1200 years ago, and in the process,
spread what started out as a Latin/Atlanean pidgin, and eventually evolved
into modern Tazhi.

That certainly explains why Tazhi has a lot of Latin-like roots mixed in
with a lot of strange and alien roots.

Yet it can have a cozy familiar sound to it too. -riu is a place you go to
find or get something.  So if you want pitsu (pizza) you go to the
pitsariu.(accent on the a) And from the verb eso (to eat) we get esariu,
(restaurant) esarim (dinning room), etc.  And from various words like "to
pray", "to worship", "to meditate", "to perform a ritual", etc, I can derive
many different words for "church", like suplariu; suplorim (chappel);
venariu (house of worship) transariu (meditation hall); invokariu (ritual
hall); etc. etc. (-riu is a large public place while -rim is a small private
space.)

--Gary