Re: artlang-blindness of linguists (was ...)

Padraic Brown wrote:

> --- Roger Mills <romilly@...> a scris
> > Just today for some reason I recalled the
> > French title of "From Here to
> > Eternity"-- Tant qu'il y aura des hommes-- and
> > realized I have no way to say
> > "as long as..."  Then I realized I can't say
> > "_As far as_ I know..." etc.
>
> A lot of those are handled by various idioms in
> Kerno. The basic as...as unit is tadn(N)...ke:
> tadn nZawzó ke John Bull (as English as John
> Bull). As far as I know = Ado ke savem (all up to
> what I know); I got as far as chap. 1 = leoi apoz
> lê ciapiteor lê 1.
>
> > "We got _as far as_ (some
>
> To get as far as = monir apoz.
>
Useful ideas. They will go into the Semantic Grinder-upper.......

Indonesian has a bunch of useful idioms with the prefix se- 'one, same, a,
....?'
--sejauh 'as _far_ as':  sejauh saya tahu 'as far as I know...', [pergi]
sejauh Jakarta '[to go] as far as Jakarta'
--sepanjang 'along' (panjang 'long'): jalan sepanjang sungai 'walk along the
river'
(These may be calques of Dutch forms, perhaps-- Kash can often do the same
thing with ADJ+ni 'of-it')

--seumur 'of the same age':  kita seumur 'we're the same age'; saya seumur
(dengan) Ali 'I'm the same age as (with) Ali'.
--se-ADJ mungkin 'as ADJ as possible'-- so far I only have "as soon as
possible" = tanju krat tanju, lit. 'now most now', I rather like that :-))

Rather mysterious:
--seharusnya [se+have to+of it] 'the way it has to be'
--seadanya [ada 'be, there is'] 'the way it is'
--sebaiknya [baik 'good'] 'the best thing [to do...] is'
--sebetulnya [betul 'true'] 'in fact ~the truth of the matter is...'
and others.