Re: Tiki and French

Hi Herman,

On Thu, 13 Apr 2006, Herman Miller wrote:
>
> I'm fairly certain now that Tiki is around 100 years old and created by
> a native speaker of French. I'm still open to other possibilities if I
> can think of something that makes more sense, but that's the current
> assumption. As soon as I have something ready, I'll put together an
> announcement celebrating 100 years of Tiki and put it up on my web page.
> (I figure it might as well be exactly 100 years old this year.)
>
> So now it looks like I'm going to have to make some changes based on
> these assumptions. For one thing, the main vocabulary items should all
> have glosses based on French vocabulary (and century-old French
> vocabulary, if that makes a difference). ...
I would guess so!  This would impinge greatly
on technological terms, particularly those to
do with transport, communication and enter-
tainment.  It might also be worth considering
that class structures were generally more
rigid in Europe a century ago than now, so that
if Dr. M were a learned gent he may not know
the terms for, eg, boot-polish, colander or
broom - since they relate to tasks he would
not himself ever have been expected to
perform ...


> ...That process could take a
> while, but I could always quietly correct "errors" later if I discover
> them after putting the page up, or explain them as "features" borrowed
> from some other language. Probably also some features of French grammar
> would be important to add; reflexive pronouns, verbs conjugated for
> tense (rather than aspect), and so on.
Subjunctive?  It was more important in daily speech
when my teachers were young, it seems, than it is now.


> A few obvious things come to mind:
>
> * French, like many European langs including English, has a verb "to be"
> with numerous uses. I was thinking that Tiki adjectives would be used
> much like verbs, but this seems like an idea that would be unlikely to
> occur to an early 20th century (non-linguist) French speaker. On the
> other hand, "Dr. M" must have had some familiarity with Japanese
> grammar, which has a category of adjectives that act much like verbs.
> (I'm still assuming that Dutch and Japanese are the two foreign
> languages that had the strongest influence on Tiki.) So it's possible
> that adjectives might be used without "to be", but it'd probably be more
> likely to follow the European model.
Indeed.


> * Distinguish between pairs of words like "savoir" and "connaître"
> (which isn't the best example since many other European languages
> distinguish these, at least the ones I'm familiar with, although they're
> both "to know" in English). (How does French express "to know how", by
> the way?)
"to know how" = "savoir"
"to know how to do or make" = "savoir faire"

>
> * Rather than having words for "hungry" and "thirsty", the French
> expressions "avoir faim" and "avoir soif" could be used. Thus, the word
> "to have" takes on a broader meaning than I was originally intending.
and "to need (something)"
= "avoir besoin de (quelquechose)".

Also the use of "faire" in:
"il fait chaud" & "il fait froid".

French uses some other auxiliary verbs in places
that Germanic languages don't, and in ways that
don't exactly parallel Spanish, eg "falloir" & "devoir".
eg "Il nous faut partir maintenant."


> * Words that are compounds in French should generally be compounds in
> Tiki. "Umbrella" (which would have been "kasa" from Japanese) would be
> derived from "parapluie", which could turn out something like "pare-ame"
> (I don't yet have a root for French "parer", which I'm assuming is the
> source of "para-" in "parapluie", but "rain" is from Japanese "ame".)
> Potato is "earth apple", which coincidentally is what the Dutch word for
> potato means.
and (surprise!) exactly what the French phrase
"pomme de terre" means, too ...


> * Sequence of tenses could work in a similar manner to the way they're
> used in French, but in a simplified form.
>
> * A few words for concepts specific to French, like "chez", could have
> simple Tiki equivalents. (Other examples?)
Some idioms have a more Gallic flavour than others,
and it would be amusing to see them translated
directly into Tiki or simply lent to it:

"Sacre bleu!  Zut, alors ... Tant pis.  Quelle espèce
de ...  Cochon!  Diable!  Merde!  Elle est une femme
d'un certain âge ...  Selon lui ... le petit déjeuner."


> Is there anything else that comes to mind? It's been 25 years since I
> studied French in high school, so I don't remember much.
My last school French class was 40 years ago!
Sacre bleu! ;-)

Regards,
Yahya


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