Re: Terms of Endearment

En réponse à Chris Bates :

>I was thinking about terms of endearment, how many people have included
>them in their conlangs so far? There seem to be a surfeit in english:
>love, dear, darling etc. I don't know how many there are in other
>languages, I think french has mon cher / ma cherie but I don't know if
>it has many others
So many! You've already got a few replies but as token Frenchman of the
list I couldn't resist :)) . Mon amour, ma puce, mon bouchon, nounours,
plus combinations with adjectives and mixings (leading to things like "mon
petit bouchon d'amour en sucre"!!! ;)))) ), the strength of French is not
the number of terms of endearment but the fact that it's an open and
productive class. Depending on the situation and the person, nearly
anything can become a term of endearment and everyone will understand that
it's meant that way (a common thing is also to use mild insults as terms of
endearment. A dangerous game, but quite common in French).

>  (I have this dodgy horror story in which one of the
>main male characters is a frenchman in america, and he consistantly
>calls the woman he likes ma petite), and I looked up the spanish for
>dear and got querido/a which I thought was really nice lol (unless I'm
>wrong querido = wanted).
But also "loved". "Querer" means both "to want" and "to love".

>While I was thinking about that I got onto "to love" and "to like". Do
>many natural languages distinguish between the two? French doesn't (je
>t'aime = I like/love you),
Yes it does: Je t'aime/Je t'aime bien, two completely different things ("je
t'aime" can *never* mean "I like you". It has only the strong meaning "I
love you"). There's also the verb "plaire", used like Spanish "gustar", but
it is a bit different in meaning. Depending on the situation, it can mean
"I'm quite fond of you" (you often say "tu me plais bien" for this sense)
or "You're sexually attractive" :)) .

>How many people have the distinction in their
>conlang?
Will you believe that I don't think any of my languages has terms of
endearment?!!! :(((

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.