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Tirelat vocabulary from one world to another

From:Herman Miller <hmiller@...>
Date:Wednesday, September 10, 2008, 2:11
I've been thinking about how to use Tirelat vocabulary and define the
meanings of Tirelat words. As I've discovered, Tirelat is a Sangari
langauge, but I don't know much about the Sangari world or culture. So
what I'm thinking is that Tirelat words have a parallel set of meanings,
one meaning relating to things and ideas in the familiar world, and
another meaning as actually used by Sangari speakers. That way I don't
have to be too precise about the Sangari meanings, but I can continue to
develop the language by writing and translating texts about the "real
world".

For example, take a look at the basic color vocabulary. Tirelat as
spoken by Sangari has words for colors based on the perception of
Sangari vision, which ignores red but perceives ultraviolet.

http://www.io.com/~hmiller/png/new-tirelat-colors.png

For the Human Tirelat vocabulary, I've revised the color words based on
a red/green axis and a yellow/blue axis, which fits the way humans
typically perceive color.

http://www.io.com/~hmiller/png/2008-tirelat-colors.png

Compare this with the older, more artificial decimal system of color
that I used for Tirelat before the Sangari transition. This system was
based on the internal encoding of colors in a computer file, and had
little to do with human perception.

http://www.io.com/~hmiller/png/tirelat-colors.png

Other aspects of the vocabulary could use a similar kind of rough
correspondence of meaning. So I can continue using words like
"squirrel", "guitar", or "pizza" in the Tirelat vocabulary, even if
there aren't any exact counterparts. But I can assume that a "saraan" is
a kind of musical instrument, probably having a number of strings,
frets, a neck, and so on, if such a thing exists in the Sangari world,
even if we might not recognize it as an exact copy of a guitar. A
"fazaalzimi" by definition is flat (fazaal) and has a crust, like a
pizza, but whether it has anything like pepperoni on it depends on the
sort of things the Sangari eat.