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Cool (was Re: T-Shirt)

From:Carlos Thompson <carlos_thompson@...>
Date:Monday, September 25, 2000, 21:12
Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:

> > 4. Isn't this shirt cool? > > Hardly works, because the idiom "cool" is almost impossible > to translate other than by borrowing.
Not quite. Proably speakers have a way to express something close to cool, without borrowing. I can think in Spanish a lot of expressions: "una onda" (mexican), "de pelos" (also mexican), "chévere" (colombian and I guess actually latinamerican... at least caribean), "la verraquera" (colombian and caribean), "del putas" (colombian, mostly bogotan)... none of them are borrowings from English yet they express the same concept as "cool". Translating "cool" could be a good excercise and probably would show something about the language. Actually, the English ethymology of "cool" is not quite natural for me (why a word meaning a low temperature became a word for meaning ... "cool"). But then mexican expresions like "onda" or "de pelos", or colombian expresions like "chévere" (probably derived from "Chevrolet"... or is this folk ethimology?), "del putas" are not transparent. But "verraquera" as nominalization of "verraco" (tough, in the sense of tough guy), from "verraco" (male pig)... well this is an expression I can see how it came. Well. How would you say "cool" in a sentence like "Isn't this shirt cool?" in your conlangs? What does it means ethimologically. I'll have to thing this a little for Chleweyish but such a word must exist. -- Carlos Th