Re: ash nazg on my pinky because it's too small

On 12 Dec, Danny Wier wrote:

> For example, to the ruling Qotil group, the "thou" form has
> become a vulgarity. It is only used in expressions of contempt (the 2nd
> plural is used normally), or in street language as a term of affection.
> (Tech doesn't merely have swear words; it has swear grammar.)
>
    I like the idea of a "swear grammar". Could it be expanded to things
other than pronouns?
    Interesting that in the Qotil group, the 2nd familiar is only used for
contempt. I seem to recall (and fluent/native speakers please correct me)
that in German, one can use an otherwise perfectly non-vulgar
2nd person familiar to indicate contempt, ie ironic use of familiarity to
indicate contempt. Do other langs with formal/familiar pronouns do this?
(Christophe, how about French?)
    In  Israeli Hebrew, contemptuous familiarity is not grammatical, but it
exists;
for example, when someone opens a comment to a complete stranger
with  "hey, |motek| ..." (= hey, sweetness...)
    But then again, English does this too: as in "listen pal" (or "buddy" or
its shortened  form,  "bud")  when the person is far from being the
speaker's friend.

> I also came up with a "pyramid" system for distinguishing the gender of
the
> subjects and objects of verbs, possessors of nouns, and personal objects
of
> prepositions. First person makes no such distinction, with the same form
for
> "I" used regardless of the speaker's sex. Second person has two forms for
> masculine and feminine (you probably won't be talking to anything with a
> neuter gender, unless you're really bored).
    Or, again, being contemptuous!  :-) And, would it be worse to
intentionally use the wrong gender or to refer to the person with a neutral
gender? Under what conditions?
There can be all sorts of shades of contempt!


Dan Sulani
-----------------------------------------------------
likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a

A word is an awesome thing.

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