Re: Attn: Spanish speakers

On Aug/30/2002, bnathyuw wrote:

> quite cool in a hieroglyphic sort of way the spanish
> tho
        What I was thinking today, as I worked a bit on my conlang, was
that ... well, how do you non-romance speaker people get to learn
spanish? Because it's absolutely crazy! :-) I mean that it's overly
complex, full of rules for even the simplest things. Not that I don't
like it, of course, but it's difficult anyway :-)

        For example: my grief was about adjectives that came from nouns.
I was thinking how it was done in spanish, and I realized that there are
quite a few ways to do it:

        - From "Paz" ("peace") you have "pacífico" ("pacific" or
          "peaceful")
        - From "Siervo" ("servant"), you have "servil" (ehm ... don't
          know how to translate this; it's "the quality of being prone to
          serve", or something alike)
        - From "Gozo" ("joy"), you have "gozoso" ("joyful")
        - From "Muerte" ("death") you have "mortal" ("mortal", but also
          "deadly")

        So, there are at least four different rules for this. And I'm
sure there's still some other left :-) The thing gets every more hairy
when we get to ... hmmm ... gentilicians? (the names of the people that
inhabit some place) I guess that if I were knowledgeable in spanish
linguistics I'd see clearly the differences, but I am not and thus I do
not; I just speak and write it :-) I think I'll have to get myself a
good dictionary one of this days r:-)

        Does anyone know what the "rules" are for this kind of things,
if any, in other natlangs/conlangs? Any will do, I just want to know
that there are rules to keep my sanity :-)

--
        Roberto Suarez Soto

Replies