Re: Pronouns in Kalon

Nik Taylor wrote:

>Joe wrote:
>
>
>>ka- Family
>>nu - Friend
>>ho - Aquaintance
>>le - Known of
>>na - unknown
>>So, the pronoun 'okanuto-u' means 'I'(when adressee is a friend).  It is
>>possible to reduce this simply to 'okanu'(when no-one else is involved
>>from your family).  Or, in some cases, merely 'kanu'(Lit. '(a)
>>person/people from my family who is/are your friend(s)')
>>
>>
>
>So, wouldn't this mean that first person pronouns would, by default,
>*always* have ka-?  Wouldn't it make more sense for that morpheme to
>relate to the relationship between speaker and addressee.  Thus, "I",
>when speaking to a friend, would be onutou, to a family member, okatou,
>to a stranger onatou, etc.
>
>
Well, that relationship is expressed in the third morpheme, but it's not
always 'ka'.  It's traditional for a widow(er) to refer to herself as
'le-', in which case 'I' would be(in its full form) olenuto-i. Equally,
people trying to be self-critical will use 'na-'.  (onanuto-u).

>What about plurals?  How would I refer to a group where some are family
>members, some friends, and some people you don't know?  Pe-?-pie (I'm
>guessing that the -e would be used in mixed-gender groups)
>
>
>
I'm thinking you'd probably use the 'known' form - pelekapi-e.  It's
considered very bad form to address someone as 'na-', and over-familiar,
if you don't know them well enough, to address them as 'nu-' or even
'ho-'.  People very rarely get offended by 'le-'.