Re: fictional worlds

 --- Santiago <sanctifeld@...> wrote: > I
have a question for you all... I'd like to know to
> what extent are the cultures behind your conlangs
> absolutely fictional...
mine has no culture. it's a language for me to use (
and anyone else who wants to, ie noone ). so it should
have words for all modern things. at the same time my
world view ( atheism being a critical part of it )
influence what there are words for ( there is no word
for 'sacred', you have to use the borrowed words
|krist|, |yahweh|, |lah| &c ).

>
> My lang, Moesteskin (Moestesian would be in English)
> has a lot of vocabulary relating to the latest (an
> not so late) technology developments... Yes, words
> like "television", "computer"... what do you think
> of that? It doesn't look original, does it?
>
> Should I do away with those terms, and try to create
> a whole culture with their own objects and then name
> them with the lang?
>
i don't see why ( for obvious reasons ! ).

however, i do find myself avoiding these sorts of
terms a lot of the time. i can't seem to decide
whether to go the way of (?) most natural languages
and use compound words for them, go the way of eg
icelandic and use words originally used for other
things ( |sími|, 'telephone', originally meant
'thread' ; |skrjár| ( i think that's right ),
'computer screen', originally meant 'amniotic
membrane' (!) ), or to use completely new words, on
the grounds that they're concepts current to the birth
of the language and should have their own roots . . .
!

again, i'ld be interested in anyone's ideas,

bn

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