Re: CHAT: RPGs (was Re: Wargs)

Sally Caves wrote:

> > > Hey, if "man wolf" was a good enough compound for our Anglo-Saxon predecessors,
> > > it should be good enough for us!
> Tom, John Cowan has simply taken me out of context, and appears to be
> responding to a half-sentence of mine.  Actually, I don't understand
> John's remark at all, or why my half-quoted sentence inspired it.  I
> think it had something to do with my original question, and that was:
> how do you say werewolf in your language?
Indeed.  I was merely suggesting that "man wolf", whether it is the
etymology of "werewolf" or not, is a fairly good compound for it
in a head-last language like English.  "Wolfman" is also, of course,
in use; so one can say that either "wolfish man" or "manlike wolf"
is a reasonable compound for a conlang.


> for how can I also say hermaphrodite in Teonaht?  man woman-like?  That
> just doesn't cut it, does it?
No, I don't think so.  Lojban uses a compounding strategy with a form of
the word "and" for cases like this. Skt is just full of them, and even
has "or" compounds like "victory-defeat" meaning "victory or defeat".

> FYI, John,
> It is simply not known whether the element "were" in English
> werewolf really means man.  It's used only once in the Old English
> corpus, and to mean Satan.  But wer, man, a word with a short vowel in
> it, is spelled were, implying a long vowel.  It was shortened in Middle
> English to werwolf, and has the variants werewolf and warwolf.
I thought that the controversy was whether OE werewolf > ME werwolf,
or whether the latter was a spontaneous re-creation.  "Wer" was still
in use in ME poetry, IIRC... (Sir Gawain, I think?)

> Wergild did not mean "man money," as it is popularly conceived.
Yeah, in hindsight that's fairly obvious, as "wer" is firmly masculine
in meaning, but women and children had a wergild too.

--

John Cowan      http://www.reutershealth.com            jcowan@reutershealth.com
Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies / Schliess eurer Aug vor heiliger Schau
Den er genoss vom Honig-Tau / Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.
                -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)