Re: Clothing, was: Re: Translation Relay Update

On Tue, 8 Jun 1999, Mia Soderquist wrote:

> Sally Caves wrote:
> > What are the names of some conlang clothes?
>
Hey! I think I missed this. No doubt because while I'm
patiently waiting for the results of the relay, I delete
everything that has to do with its organization - I can't
play, having known (and loved) the original Valdyan text
for years.

I've put up a general description of clothing in one
city on Andal on my webpages - I'll just mention the
Denden words here.

mai       - clothing in general or sleeve
weilo'mai - chest or box for putting clothes in
maile     - shirt. Comes in two basic shapes: with long sleeves
            and short sleeves. The long-sleeved version reaches
            down to the thighs, the short-sleeved version to the
            navel. Loosely fitting.
mairat    - a close-fitting garment for the upper body that's held
            together at the bottom by a piece of string. Essentially
            military wear.
maizi     - cape or mantle, or a gauze bit of clothing that's draped
            over either the maile, or the naked body. It should reach
            to the feet.
maian     - underwear; either a piece of cloth to wind around the
            breasts or a loincloth.
utama     - hat - it's more important to wear some headgear, than to
            cover your body in Broi.
utamai    - cap, soft hat
shental   - trousers or stockings - only the legs are covered. These
            are not elastic, but rather baggy. Have been in fashion for
            a few years, but caused so many caustic comments about
            slandering the shape of shapely legs that they have passed
            out of fashion.
shentermai - stocking
shenterzi  - boots, often soft coverings of leather or padded cotton
taya, taja - cape, mantle, but fairly short
zidaxin    - long coat, as fashion dictates fur-lined, even in
             subtropical Broi
shenter    - shoe, slipper
daxin      - verb: to wear, noun: wearables, including paint and jewelry.
dabbe      - paint. Charyan women paint feet, hands, wrists, breasts, face
             and often dab a little colour around the navel.

>
> ** lit. "secret garment" -- Ea-diwe seem to have the interesting
> tendency that I have noticed among certain people I know-- being more
> embarrassed to be seen in underwear than to be seen naked. Nudity is
> pretty commonplace, no big deal.
>
In Charya it's worse to wear nothing on the head than nothing
on the body; and most children under six of five run around naked.
(Much easier to wash the chocolate stains off skin than off cotton,
let alone other stains).

> *** I actually have notes scribbled around trying to come up with a good
> word for "bra". I decided in the end to use "wuba", which is kind of
> cute, since the word for breast is "wabu". (There was no way I was going
> to call it a "wabuwuba".)
>
That was easy for me: no bra's yet! Some nice sound-symbolism in
wabuwuba, isn't there? It's almost enough to go back to the
ancient Greeks who believed that the sound of a word had some
direct relation to its meaning!

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt