Re: Introducing Myself

Rune Haugseng wrote:
> No, that's probably the exception. It normally just means a unique or
> special instance of the noun - to take a bad example, if the Kematians
> were Christians, they might use "nezerti" for "the Lord", using the
> unique form.
Interesting.  Uatakassí, my conlang, has something called "name
particles".  They are short one-syllable words placed before something
to show that it is a name.  For example, "prophet" (female) is
_tinlastá_, the name of the founder of their religion is _díz tiNlastá_
(ti- is a gender prefix, hence my capitalization), _díz_ indicates the
name of an Elder.  The name particles are (I think, there's some that I
may drop):
Boy: Bí
Deity (obsolete, they have recently become monotheists): Káu
Elder: Díz
Family: Ní (note: Family is only an approximate translation, it is
somewhere between family and clan)
Girl: Diá
Goddess-child: Kán (roughly: Angel)
Inhabited Place: Ní (probably related to the Family marker)
Lineage: Níis
Man: Kús
People, race: Nís
Period of time, day, year, etc.: Zá
River: Kuíu
Star, world: Lá
Village: Tá
Woman: Tá (purely coincidence)
Written Character: Má

Some of these, like nís are only used if the name has a meaning, so,
like, the Traderfolk are called _nís sunNazkuftíi_, "Trader" is
_sunazkuftí_; sunnazkuftíi is the plural of that.

There's no word for "lord", but there is _sugladíz_ (nagladíz in the
masculine) which means "leader", so if they were to encounter
Christianity, they might translate The Lord as _káu naGladíz_

These particles allow borrowed names to avoid inflecting, by placing the
inflections on the particle.  For example, "America" would be ní
Amíllika "of America" would be níf Amíllika, etc. (-(a)f is genetive)

> The idea is basically that, instead of marking negation on the verb
> (or with an adverb), it is marked on nouns and pronouns. So "he didn't
> go" would literally be "no-he went", marking the negation on "he". (I
> can't give any better examples right now, as I don't remember the
> negative articles.)
Interesting idea.

--
"So he's made up languages?  I'm not really surprised."
"No just cause can be advanced by terror"
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42

Replies