CHAT: R: CHAT: (con)lang names

Zapotec languages are surely the most Olympic langs : )

Then Zapotec was also the name of a guy appearing on the local version of
Mickey Mouse's comics (he was a scientist who invented the time machine).

Luca

> On Sat, 25 Nov 2000, And Rosta wrote:
>
> > BTW, I have long thought that Tohono O'odham is just about the coolest
> > language name there is. It just doesn't sound like a language at all.
> > It sounds like the name of someone with a Japanese mother and an
> > Irish father. Who would think of naming a language Seamus Takahashi?
>
> There's also Akimel O'odham, which is the language that Marcus is
> looking at right now in his field methods class.
>
> > Other possible candidates for coolest lang name would be !Kung (etc.)
> > and "the Bzyb dialect of Abkhaz". I quite like Hixkaryana, too. And
> > Guugu Yimidhirr. And Wolof. And Twi. (Note that I'm talking cool names,
> > not just likeable ones like Malayalam.)
> >
> > Anyone have any other nominations? (I'll go through my Ruhlen
> > classification book when I get back to my other flat, to see if there
> > are any more ace names that haven't occurred to me.)
>
> Well, my personal favorite is Tubatulabal (the first <u> is a high,
> central, unrounded vowel), a Uto-Aztecan language once spoken in the
> Kern River Valley of Eastern California, but I don't get around much.
> The name just rolls off the tongue (after about half an hour's
> practice).
>
> > As for Conlang names, my votes provisionally go to Tsxaah ([ts^xaa]
> > with harsh voice, iirc; ^ is the coarticulation arc) and Namyuan
> > (because it's pronounced [D@bj@]).
>
> Well, I'd have to stick with Tepa [ti-Ba]. If I didn't like it, I
> wouldn't use it :-).
>
> Dirk
>
> --
> Dirk Elzinga
> dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu
>