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

From:Herman Miller <hmiller@...>
Date:Friday, March 26, 1999, 5:22
On Wed, 24 Mar 1999 22:09:42 -0800, Sally Caves <scaves@...>
wrote:

>We were talking just a few days ago about the _Lingua Ignota_. I'vedone=
this very
>thing when making up vocabulary (nouns) for Teonaht. I was >going to suggest that we conlangers produce some taxonomies similar >to Hildegard's: Let's see a list from some of you with at least twenty=
items
>in each of these categories:
Interesting challenge. All from the same language? Only Olaetyan has any words relating to gods, but Olaetyan doesn't have any words for diseases = as far as I recall.
> 1. God, gods, angels, saints, and demons.
I'm sure there are at least 20 of these in Olaetyan. I'll have to refer = to some 15-year-old notes to refresh my memory.
> 2. Human family relationships.
I assume Thrinn family relationships count? Zariva has a kinship = vocabulary with over 20 words.
> 3. The parts of the body.
Jarrda has a bunch of those.
> 4. Diseases of the body.
Now there's a topic I haven't thought much about. Jarrda has words for "disease", "flu", and "stroke" (the latter from when I was translating newspaper headlines to enrich the Jarrda vocabulary).
> 5. Names relating to Church or Religion
Very few of those in any of my languages. Jarrda might have enough.
> 6. Names relating to Secular Hierarchies, the parts of Government
Olaetyan has a few words, but I don't know if I can come up with 20. = Oddly enough, Jarrda probably has the most government-related words (again, = from the headline translations).
> 7. The parts of trade and human craft.
Olaetyan or Jarrda would probably have enough words in this category.
> 8. Days, months, seasons of the year, hours, minutes.
Both Olaetyan and Jarrda have well-developed calendars.
> 9. The Quotidian things of life: clothing, houses, farming.
Probably just about any of my languages would be good for this category, although I might as well use Jarrda.
> 10. The parts of the Natural World.
This is one area in which Jarrda excels. It looks as if, with the exception of the first category, Jarrda is the best choice. I'll see what I can come up with when I have the time.