Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

COMMENT: Nindic and Questions

From:Elliott Lash <al260@...>
Date:Wednesday, July 10, 2002, 21:20
I've been in the process of editting my roots for my related languages Silindion
and Nindic (a name which I hate, but I've been stuck with). Every so often, (or
actually, almost every time I go back to the roots), I wind up deriving new
words for Nindic. Some of these new creations are below.

_ow_ egg /o:/ (plural: _ew_ /Ew/)
*oba    One of my personal favorites!

_ceil_ a small creek /ke:l/ (plural: _ceili/n_ /ke:li:n/)
*kesli

_gwarow_ fruit /gwaro:/ (plural: _gweryw_ /gwEriw/)
*war-oba

_pib_ sparrow /pib/  (plural: _pibaedd_ /pibajD/ or _pibi/n_ /pibi:n/)
*piwo-epa

_callach_ mushroom /kalax/ (plural: _call_ /kal/)
*kalna-ksi

and finally:

_pewd_ foot /pEwd/ (plural: _peid_ /pe:d/)
*petuw


Now, my question is twofold (actually..it's two questions):

1) *kesli from which came _ceil_ meant a Little Valley, as can be seen in
Silindion: _keili_ valley. Is it a plausible semantic shift from Little Valley
to Little Stream in a Little Valley to Stream in a Valley?

2) In this spread of words, I have included words which are interesting because
of their (superficial though it is) similarity to real world words in various
languages.

_ceil_ is similar to the New York word _kill_ which (besides the violent death
meaning), is used to describe various small creeks and streams.

in a dialect of Nindic, known as Hinessio, the word:

_u_ Egg, has a plural  _eu_ which is pronounced exaclty the same as French _oeufs_

And finally, in the same dialect, the word

_pewd_ becomes _pot_ /pOt/ and later on becomes _fot_ /fOt/ with a plural _feit_
/fe:t/. I did this intentionally to make it look like English Foot.

Do any of you do the same thing in any of your conlangs?

Elliott Lash.