Re: Letters in conlang

At 11:02 PM Tuesday 7/17/01, you wrote:
>Have any of you thought about how letters and correspondence would be
>written in your conlangs?
I just had to address this, writing a letter in my conlang for another
project. I'm afraid I wasn't all that creative with it:

         date

Dear brother,

How are you?

To keep in mind,

Paul


The salutation never involves a proper name. In Iltârer, proper names are
everywhere to disambiguate the pronouns anyone, so it is not needed in the
salutation. The noun used in the salutation is a reference to the
relationship between writer and addressee. For bondmates, these are
prescribed terms. For acquaintances of strangers, one uses "tephasar",
which means a respected person (sort of like "Dear sir or madam").

The Iltâr would find our custom of ending letters with proclamations of
sincerity quite pointless, and perhaps mildly insulting ("are you
suggesting that I suspect you of lying?"). The sign-off is typically an
infinitive describing the writer's state of mind, such as "nêmphâl", which
means to keep in one's thoughts or to miss someone.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tom Tadfor Little            tom@telp.com
Santa Fe, New Mexico (USA)
Telperion Productions        www.telp.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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