Re: CHAT: Conlang and Writers

On Fri, 12 Mar 1999, Nik Taylor wrote:

> Sally Caves wrote:
> > I could only manage one!  If the Teonim have neighbors, their languagew=
ill
> > have to be pretty superficial.  I'm persistent when it comes to
> > sticking with one beloved conlang.
>=20
> No problem with that, I've created "languages" that only consist of a
> couple of words, and one or two derivative suffixes, purely for the
> purpose of word-borrowings,=20
Me too! The Valdyan word for "moon", _lau_, is a borrowing from the
Velihan (Velihas is the country to the east; I used to think the
people living there were elves, but now I know them better they turn
out to be a slightly different kind of humans, created earlier than
the people of Valdyas). The Velihan word is _l=E1o_, but as Valdyan
doesn't have the /ao/ diphthong (/=E1/ is a very open /a/) it gets
borrowed as /au/.

I don't know (yet) why the Valdyans borrowed a word for such a common
and visible thing, and what their own original word was; there must
be a historical or religious reason, but I'm not working on early
history at the moment.

   Irina

               ira@rempt.xs4all.nl (mailing list address)=20
                     irina@rempt.xs4all.nl (myself)
     http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/frontpage.html (English)
    http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/backpage.html (Nederlands)