Re: Butterflies

taliesin the storyteller wrote:
> I came over this text:
> http://www.trismegistos.com/IconicityInLanguage/Articles/Beeman.html
> and it made me think: what are the word(s) for "butterfly" in various
> conlangs? Klingon lacks the word I think, and I have few if any words
> for insects in my langs and sketches, including a word for butterfly.
The word for "butterfly, moth" in Jarda is "jundi" (or "gjundi"
depending on the romanization), which was inherited as "djuundi" in
Tirelat, and then as "đundi" in Minza. Many of the Minza insect words
were originally Jarda words that Tirelat inherited, or original Tirelat
words (before I decided that Tirelat was a Sangari language, which is
spoken on a different world without any of the same insects).

Kirezagi (which originally was intended to be spoken on this world) has
"mozai" (written "虫茶") for "butterfly". As you can see from the
Chinese characters, this is a compound of "insect" ("mo") and "tea"
("cai"). This makes little sense until it is explained that the Kirezagi
word for "tea" can also mean "delightful".