From: David Peterson
> Previously, I had thought that this kind of an idea (that is, a fake or
illegitimate thing) was something that
> could only exist in an industrialized culture (I don't know why. I know
nothing about evolution or
> anthropology or achaeology or history or anything. This is just something
I thought). So I was rather
> surprised (and, again, others with more knowledge in the areas I specified
[or ones I didn't think to include]
> might not have been) to find that there's a suffix for just this in the
Eskimo languages I'm studying. It's an
> inflectional suffix you attach to a noun to indicate that that noun is:
(a) a fake or facsimile version of the noun;
> (b) a somehow less-legitimate form of the noun; or (c) something that
looks like the noun, but isn't really the
> noun (this is kind of like (a)). A very useful suffix and concept, IMO.
Just so happens I'm looking for stuff on Inuit languages. Not much online,
but I did find some RealPlayer-format news from CBC in Inuktitut (the kind
they speak in Nunavut). I can't find a decent description of Greenlandic
(Kalaallisut) phonology/orthography, but I'm sure it's not much different
than Canadian or Alaskan. So it's either a few trips to Perry-Castañeda or
buy Inuktitut For Dummies from Amazon or something.
Since I want Tech to be highly inflected and polysynthetic, I'm beginning a
study on languages with that sort of thing. Eskimo-Aleut is the family that
interests me the most now, though obviously I could also use Mohawk or an
Algonquian language as inspiration. I've already studied a little on
Georgian verb grammar, which has polysynthetic features (the language itself
isn't polysyntethic but is strongly inflected nonetheless).
My two conlangs-in-progress are the opposite of each other: Elves/Djinn need
a very complex and ancient form of communication; Ogres need a simple,
modern one.