Re: LeGuin (was: a 12th century conlang)

In message <19990325.222220.9614.3.draqonfayir@...>, Steg Belsky
<draqonfayir@...> writes
>On Fri, 26 Mar 1999 02:56:46 +0000 John Fisher
><john@...> writes:
>>..........
>>kristasi:      Christianity
>>ivri:          be Jewish
>
>>    8.  Days, months, seasons of the year, hours, minutes.
>>sartan, elentan, avotan, wodean,   thortan, ivatan, ivrian
>>Sunday, Monday,  Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday  Saturday
>
>Is _ivrian_ related to _ivri_, above?
My goodness!  That's really careful reading.  Yes, you're right - the
-_tan_ or -_an_ element means "day".  It used to be _ivritan_ but I
changed it, becasue _ivrian_ is stressed on the first syllable,
according to the rules, which I thought sounded better.

>Is there a reason that you made the word for "Jew" based on _`ivri_, as
>opposed to _yehudi_?
I suppose I could think of something, but not really.  I just liked the
sound.  But I like to leave odd things in the language, as not much of
its "history" is known.  For example elsewhere in that list is the word
for king/queen:  _melcwa_.  _cwa_ is an enclitic and the stem is _melc_.
And given that all Elet Anta measure words are loans (the old measure
words being "lost"), how come _hora_ is the word for "hour", and "lira"
a pound (sterling)?

_Ivri_ acts like an ordinary name-of-people word, so we have _Ivrial_ "a
Jew", _Ivria_ "the Jewish people", _Elet Ivri_ "the Hebrew language",
_Von Ivri_ "Israel (the country)".

"Iva ludis Antayara, cwar la brelen Ivriala" - "Loarna helps the
_Antayar_ who protects a Jew".

--
John Fisher   john@drummond.demon.co.uk   johnf@epcc.ed.ac.uk
Elet Anta website: http://www.drummond.demon.co.uk/anta/
Drummond ro cleshfan merec; fanye litoc, inye litoc