Re: Minhyan & the goddess of conlangs

Jeffrey Henning wrote:

> If I have seen further than others, it is because I have stood on the
> shoulders of microprocessors!
>
> I wrote a program to analyze the Esperanto words of the Ergane dictionary
> (which is public domain), parsing them into possible infix and affix
> series.
>  So it would convert _frizistino_ "hairdresser into "friz|ist|in|o", which
> it translated into:
>
>   tuurona [< tuw, "hair-do" & -ro-, "professional" & -na-, "female".] n.
> Hairdresser, female hairdresser.
>
> Of course, it would also do crazy things like:
>
>   machorab [< mab, "beard" & -cho-, "collection" & -<i>ra</i>-,
> "doctrine".]
> n. Barbarism.
>
> Perhaps barbarism is a doctrine of collecting the beards of slain enemies?
Aha! I suspected something like that, but wasn't aware of the source.  All
becomes clear. :-))))  It produced some very amusing (not to say perplexing)
derivations.

I was struck by the specificity of some of the words.  Cab-stand?? for just
one example.  Also, since the language is said to be spoken on another
planet, the presence of Baobab was amazing. It must be a remarkable place.
Parallel evolution!! Earth's Long-lost Twin??

>
> These false analyses are a known problem with Esperanto's word formation,
> which is ambiguous.  The most famous example (from Don Harlow's site) is
> 'misiloj', "missiles", which could be analyzed as "mis-il-o-j", "tools
> that
> miss"!
Hmm, otherwise known as SDI, or "Star Wars", of which, mercifully, we
haven't heard must recently.
>
> My justification for these etymologies in the world of my language is
> listed
> at the top of the lexicon (http://www.langmaker.com/minhlex.htm).
>
> Basically this method of lexical derivation was something I had always
> wanted to try, but I knew it would take too long to correct the
> etymologies
> for an engelang (my usual field of conlanging).  It worked out great for
> an
> artlang, though.
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Jeffrey
>

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