Re: Vocabulary concept mismatches

H. S. Teoh wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 05, 2004 at 09:30:12PM -0600, Herman Miller wrote:
>>I have a hard time coming up with ideas that I can't easily express in
>>English; that's one area where my languages aren't as well developed as
>>they should be. Words that don't correspond one to one aren't that hard,
>>but entirely new concepts are harder. Maybe reading through the
>>Ebisedian lexicon will give me some ideas.
>
>
> Perhaps... you can find it at:
>
> 	http://conlang.eusebeia.dyndns.org/ferochromon/lexicon.pdf
>
> You might also want to see the reference grammar, which explains things
> like conjunctions and correlatives in more depth:
>
> 	http://conlang.eusebeia.dyndns.org/ferochromon/grammar.pdf
I'm familiar with the reference grammar from the latest relay
translation, but I haven't spent much time looking at the lexicon. I
barely had enough time as it was to figure out the meaning of the relay
text and put together my Tirelat version (two days just isn't much time).

> I got the idea of correlatives from Attic Greek. I found it very
> eye-opening to learn languages like Greek and delve a little into ancient
> Greek culture. I got a lot of new ideas just by the realization that many
> aspects of ancient Greek culture are that way simply because they looked
> at things differently, in their own particular way. Once you adopt that
> mindset, you discover a whole new world of hitherto unknown or unfamiliar
> concepts.
Is this particular to Attic Greek, or would you find that sort of thing
in Homer? I don't know much about ancient Greek, but I think it's the
sort of thing it'd be good to learn if I ever had the time.

> That's why I found that having a con-culture helps a lot. Sometimes a
> novel idea just suggests itself based on how I think a Bisédi would would
> look at a certain concept or thing. It's like colored glasses with which I
> can filter concepts and ideas that go into the lexicon. Sometimes you can
> see entirely new objects with the colored glasses beyond what you
> originally had in mind.
That's pretty much the reason that Tirelat is a Sangari language now
that Lindiga has replaced it as a personal language. Now if I could only
find those colored glasses that filter out the red and let me see the
ultraviolet, I'd be all set! :-)

Interestingly, I've been finding similarities between the Sangari and
Zireen ways of thinking, despite the apparent differences in the way
their cultures work. It's true that Sangari cultures are more
authoritarian while Zireen cultures are more anarchistic, but under the
surface they have a lot in common.

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