Re: CHAT: False friends - echos from the mother tounge
From: | Stone Gordonssen <stonegordonssen@...> |
Date: | Wednesday, July 9, 2003, 14:54 |
>What would you do in the following case? Let us say, you have a root
>"sat" and an inflectional ending "an"... would you avoid the remaining
>"satan"? Just a question. Are you trying to avoid inclusion of negative
>or unpleasant terms of your mother tounge into your conlang?
While the choice is ultimately yours with regards to your conlang, I myself
take no notice of such issues as anyone working with natlangs frequently
encounters such false cognates. Other than a quick "Hmm, interesting", I
ignore them.
E.g.
I'm pretty sure that [bud_ha] exists in languages other than Pali and
doesn't mean "enlightenment".
In my Bez Dis'z the word "kod" [kod] means "food", the plural being "god"
[god].*
Of course, there are sometimes unexpected ramifications. Chevrolet's
puzzlement of why their "Nova" didn't sell well in Latin countries. "Nova"
-> "no va" -> "(it) doesn't go".
*I'm presently considering changing the orthography of Bes Dis'z, which by
chance would replace this false cognate with "~kod" [god]. Ever since it's
creation, I've contemplated whether to indicate plurals (done via voicing
the initial voiceless consonant) by changing the initial consonant or by
prefixing a sign/symbol.
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