Re: Dublex (was: Washing-machine words (was: Futurese, Chinese,

In a message dated 05/20/2002 05.51.08 PM, Jeffrey@HENNING.COM writes:

>I've been wondering what I should do with reduplication.  I've been afraid
>that it sounds to speakers of Western European languages rather childish
>and pidgin-like.
    What's wrong with being child-like and pidgin-like  0_o?  eh?  If it
works and has a certain attractive "fun element", reduplication may prove to
be a very user-friendly mnemonic aid.

>It does seem a natural augmentative, though.
    Yepyep.
    Besides if you want to play outside of the "Western Euroclone"
linguistics box ;) this is one reasonable "difference" that is not just
different-for-difference's-sake.

    ... from another thread on the list, dated 05/21/2002 01.18.19 AM, Nik
(fortytwo@GDN.NET) writes:

>Well, Indonesian (informally?) uses the number "2" to indicate
>reduplication, which is used for plural.  I can't remember any examples,
>so I'll fake it up with English.  It would be as if we said "bookbook"
>for the plural of "book", but wrote it "book2".
>
>Japanese also has a reduplication mark used with kanji, so that
>_hitobito_ (people, reduplicated form of _hito_ - the /b/ in the second
>part is due to the common voicing process in compounds) is written with
>the kanji for _hito_ (person) followed by the reduplicative marker.

::tip of the hat to Mathias/Tunu for similar advice about reduplication given
me about a year and some ago::  Gotta give credit where credit due...  ':'

Hanuman Zhang {HANoomaan JAHng} /'hanuma~n  dZahN/

~§~

_Ars imitatur Naturam in sua operatione._ <from Latin> = "Art is the
imitation of Nature in her manner of operation." " The most beautiful order
is a heap of sweepings piled up at random." ~ Heraclitus, c. 500 BCE

~§~ jinsei to iu mono wa, kinchou na geijyutsu to ieru deshou ~§~
<from Japanese> = lit. "one can probably say that 'life' is a precious
artform")

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