Re: Depressing vocabulary for mid-June
From: | Sally Caves <scaves@...> |
Date: | Tuesday, June 22, 2004, 6:14 |
----- Original Message -----
From: "Roger Mills" <rfmilly@...>
> Kou/Sally Caves wrote:
>
> > > >This is obviously very idiomatic: I know that a cold in Japanese is
> > 'kaze' --
> > > >wind -- but I don't off-hand remember the idioms for how one acquires
> > one.
> > > >Or how one happens.
> >
> > What an entirely cool concept. Cold as "wind." In Teonaht, a cold is
> > "watery head." The medievals, and later cultures in Europe, saw disease
> > as
> > a miasma. A fog creeping up on you.
>
> Hmm, that explains a puzzling but very commonly heard Indonesian complaint
> (maybe)-- "masuk angin" lit., "enter/coming-in wind". It seems to be
> occasioned by exposure to wind coming in thru windows, and particularly in
> cars and buses. Many of the older generation, esp. peasants and working
> people, aren't accustomed to riding in cars, consequently they tend to get
> car-sick, or feel queasy. But most cars and buses are not air-conditioned,
> so people want windows open. Invariably some old granny asks that they be
> closed, supaya tidak masuk angin, lit, so that the wind won't come in,
> sensible enough. But "masuk angin" is also an ailment, apparently, whose
> sovereign remedy is Vick's Vap-o-rub applied to the temples. You can
imagine
> the affect _that_ has in a hot, closed carriage.
When I was living in Geneva, Switzerland in the eighties, everybody was
concerned about "wind paralysis" (I forget the expression in French; maybe
this will ring a bell for Christophe). You had to close the windows on the
train from Geneva to Lausanne because the wind could blow on your face and
cause "paralysis." Maybe everybody was afraid of getting Tic Douloureux (or
suffered from it). A grisly disorder!!
> Here's just a few items I clipped
> > from the taxonomy I've been working on. This falls under
> > "medicine"--hypochondriac that I am:
>
> (snip a good list; I have some but by no means all of these in Kash.
> Apparently I'm insufficiently hypochondriac :-))....back to the to-do
list.)
Well, that's only about a third of it. But I also have long lists of body
parts, family members, clothes, household items... the taxonomy has a lot of
filling in left for it.
Again, who published the taxonomy (on-line) needed for a basic vocabulary
for any invented language?
Sally
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teotax.html
Reply