CHAT: (con)lang names

On Sat, 25 Nov 2000, And Rosta wrote:

> BTW, I have long thought that Tohono O'odham is just about the coolest
> language name there is. It just doesn't sound like a language at all.
> It sounds like the name of someone with a Japanese mother and an
> Irish father. Who would think of naming a language Seamus Takahashi?
There's also Akimel O'odham, which is the language that Marcus is
looking at right now in his field methods class.

> Other possible candidates for coolest lang name would be !Kung (etc.)
> and "the Bzyb dialect of Abkhaz". I quite like Hixkaryana, too. And
> Guugu Yimidhirr. And Wolof. And Twi. (Note that I'm talking cool names,
> not just likeable ones like Malayalam.)
>
> Anyone have any other nominations? (I'll go through my Ruhlen
> classification book when I get back to my other flat, to see if there
> are any more ace names that haven't occurred to me.)
Well, my personal favorite is Tubatulabal (the first <u> is a high,
central, unrounded vowel), a Uto-Aztecan language once spoken in the
Kern River Valley of Eastern California, but I don't get around much.
The name just rolls off the tongue (after about half an hour's
practice).

> As for Conlang names, my votes provisionally go to Tsxaah ([ts^xaa]
> with harsh voice, iirc; ^ is the coarticulation arc) and Namyuan
> (because it's pronounced [D@bj@]).
Well, I'd have to stick with Tepa [ti-Ba]. If I didn't like it, I
wouldn't use it :-).

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu