Knowing yourself (was: Re: my conlang: anyone interested?)

At 08:32 PM 12/6/03 -0500, you wrote:
>I am, yes, indeed, a real live 13-year old conlanger. As such, I
>personally know one. (OT: How many languages have ways to state that you
>know yourself?)
I ought to be able to do this one in Índumom Tovlaugadóis.  The language
doesn't have many words or much grammar yet, but it seems to have the right
items this time as well.

meslkhángeu - 'I know myself.'
[me.sl=."xa.New]

mesl- reflexive prefix
khánge 'to know'
-u 1st person subject marker

In any dialect that didn't have the /eu/ diphthong, this word would be
<meslkhángyu>.  And I may just decide to make the dialect that I primarily
work with one without /eu/ because, frankly, I find /eu/ extremely
difficult to pronounce and not a particularly attractive sound.  So there.

Now, I have no idea what sort of connotations this word/sentence might
actually carry to the speakers of the language.  Let's see if I can figure
it out.  If you say <khángeulid> - 'I know him,' you are saying something
more than that you know who he is, because that would be <itránasaulid> -
'I recognize him.'  So <khángeulid> must mean that you know him well enough
to have some insight into what he is like and what he could be expected to
do in certain situations.  <khánge> does not necessarily carry the
implication of psychological insight, but it can.  If you have simply met
each other and perhaps know a little bit about each other, then
<itránasaulid> would probably be the preferred way of expressing your
relationship.  (Sorry, but I can't do 'we know each other,' because I don't
know the plural subject marker nor where in the verb to stick it.)

So I suppose that you could say something like <itránasaulid tes
emikhángeulid> - 'I know who he is, but I don't know him' (lit. 'I
recognize him, but I don't know him.')

So, I suppose that to say <meslkhángeu> would mean that you felt that you
had good insight into your own character or have accurately estimated your
own abilities.

If you're going to get into the distinction that Padraic made between
knowing yourself and knowing yourself thoroughly, there is an emphatic
prefix koi- that can be used to draw that distinction.  (Koi- is sort of an
all-purpose emphatic affix.  It gets used a lot and frequently has to be
translated differently for each word it is used with.)  In any case,
<koikhángeulid> would translate to 'I know him thoroughly' or 'I really
know him,' which is something that you might easily hear a wife say about
her husband or a parent about their son.

<koimeslkhángeu> would mean 'I know myself thoroughly.'

I suppose that <meslitránasau> - 'I recognize myself' would be what you
would say upon looking in the mirror - except that the Tovláugad don't have
mirrors.

Isidora