Re: alphabet-animal books

Joe Fatula wrote:

>> ava "bird" (apyon "bee")
>"apyon" seems really familiar.  Is it from Latin?
  If not from Latin, then from some Romance language. I don't always
remember what language I stole a word from.

>> höz' "sheep"
>This seems familiar too...
Can't recall the source of that one.

>> nimar "tiger"
>While I've never seen this before, it seems like a "tigerish" sort of name.
I know that's from Arabic.

>> (pivik "squirrel")
>Ditto.
Can't remember.

>In one of my conlangs, Morgenón, there is a traditional alphabet listing.
>
<lasut!>
>A' is for álún (sheep)
>D' is for d'ran (sky)
Do those apostrophes represent something else in a non-ASCII-friendly
orthography? The ones you see in Rhean are haceks.

>In light of the discussions on animal alphabets, I looked over the list
>again.  Out of 33 letters, 11 are animals and 4 are plants.  That seemed
>interesting to me.
  If the letters were named long ago, they are more likely to be named
after natural things or very simple inventions. I doubt many alphabets have
a letter called "hovercraft". You've got mostly natural things plus castle,
wagon, fencepost, boat, and barrel in there; all of those things have been
around damn near forever.
  All of the Rhean letters have names, but they aren't "words". The excuse
for this comes from an excuse I made for the inconsistencies in Rhean
orthography: that they took their alphabet, and its letter names, from an
older and unrelated language. The letters came with their names, which were
Rheicised (?) but not translated.

Mike

(arep bita cedik c'ec'il dalet erze fia gemla g'al hakec' izin jorgo kofa
k'ar lamud mam novun onz ökör pip res' sumko s'en taf uur üta vaklav wez'
yud zida z'el)

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