[humour] con-chemistry? (Was: Re: The pitfall of Chinese/Mandarin)

On Sun, Dec 09, 2001 at 11:27:08AM -0500, Andreas Johansson wrote:
[snip]
> Get it into your head that languages aren't constructed for the benefit of
> chemistry students!
[snip]

Hmm, this got me thinking... the 5 noun cases in my conlang are IDEAL for
describing chemical reaction mechanisms. This is, of course, an abuse of
the language (and will probably get its speakers coming after me with
sharp *and* blunt objects), but it's pretty amusing nevertheless :-)

Legend:         org     originative case
                rcp     receptive case
                instr   instrumental case
                cvy     conveyant case
                loc     locative case

Examples:

1)      ihudroj0'n    hi0k3sig3'n       KileroK0'romu.
        hydrogen      oxygen            white-liquid
        (org)         (plur,cvy)        (rcp)
        From-hydrogen with-some-oxygens to-water.
        (The i- and hi- prefixes are the singular and plural neuter
        proper noun markers, respectively. Sorta like "Mr. Hydrogen" ...)

2)      ihwdroKla'rid3 KileroK0'rumi eho'drojun   `ykl0ridu'
        hydrochloride  white-liquid  hydronium    chloride
        (cvy)          (loc)         (masc,rcp)   (fem,rcp)
        HCl            in-water      to-hydronium to-chloride
        I.e., Hydrogen chloride in water becomes hydrogen cation and
        chloride anion ((ab)using masculine/feminine to denote
        cation/anion. Uh, Mr. Catt Ion and Ms. Anne Ion :-P)

3)      eTa'n0l ikalimangana't   KileroK0'rumi `yKarob0'k3sili-eTaniku
        ethanol kalium-manganate white-liquid  carboxylic-ethanyl
        (org)   (instr)          (loc)         (rcp)
        I.e., ethanol, with the help of potassium (kalium) permanganate
        (i.e., as a catalyst), in water, becomes ethanoic acid.

        Here I'm deliberately abusing the sound of the masculine proper
        name prefix e- (/&/) and the originative ending vowel -0- /A/ to
        get "ethanol", and consequently, contrasting the resulting acid as
        feminine. (Uh oh, now the feminists are going to knock on my
        door...) The use of the instrumental case to indicate the catalyst
        is actually very appropriate -- the conlang's idea of "instrumental"
        is almost precisely a catalytic action.

The bizzare thing about all this is that ...
... ALL of the above examples are actually proper sentences in my conlang!
Except for the fact that the words are totally made up, of course, and
that even if there were native equivalents for those words, the resulting
sentences would be rather nonsensical. But nevertheless, they are totally
grammatically correct sentences! :-)


T

--
Winners never quit, quitters never win. But those who never quit AND never
win are idiots.