Re: They _don't_ have a word for it!
| From: | Roger Mills <romilly@...> |
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| Date: | Saturday, September 1, 2001, 3:52 |
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Herman Miller wrote:
For the translation relay, I had
>>to devise "shehakinda" 'Earth Spirit'-- that would be similar to Gaia.
>
>I had a similar problem, not having any real equivalent for "Lord". A
>hypothetical Judeo-Christian speaker of Czirehlat might use something like
>"lerava" ("my god"), or perhaps "lejirax" ("my master") to translate words
>like "Lord". But these are inherently possessed nouns, and it would be
>ungrammatical to use the bare stems without a possessive prefix. So you'd
>end up with "someone's god" or "someone's master" in the title of the relay
>text. So I went with the idea of "Great Spirit".
>
A real live natlang ex. of an inherently possessed noun so adapted: Kisar
(Indo-nesian island off the east end of Timor) ikmakromdo 'Creator
(Christian)'--- ik- 1pl. pfx., makrom < *mata Rumaq 'master (lit. 'eye') of
the house', -do 1pl.poss. sfx. Ambonese Malay "mata rumah" is a very common
expression in the area, either in the literal meaning, or as boss-man,
superior, chieftain, 'paterfamilias' etc. etc.
(Kisar is one of the rare AN languages where *t > k. (*k > 0))