Re: Informants, Issytra, The Gospel of Bastet

On Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 10:39:01AM -0500, Sally Caves wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>
> > The joys and pains of the conlanger's Good Friend, the Delete Button.
>
> So is going NOMAIL, which I have to do on a regular basis.
I try to stick with the Delete Button option, since then if there's a
truly interesting thread, I can save it for reading later. Of course, it
helps to have a threaded mail program which displays thread nesting of
messages; this way you don't accidentally delete interesting threads.

[snip]
> > As I used to relate, my Ebisedian informant was at one time completely
> > illiterate in Roman letters (as far as Ebisedian orthography was
> > concerned, anyway), and he would give me these plaques inscribed with the
> > Relay translation in full _sanoki'_, which I had to then painstakingly
> > transcribe to Roman orthography which could be sent to the next person in
> > the Relay. This process usually takes some time, and is error-prone, as
> > reading that elaborate script called _sanoki'_ isn't exactly my piece of
> > cake. Hence, the Relay Torch moved a bit slower when it came to me, and
> > the result has silly things like spelling mistakes. :-P
>
> You sent your text in full sanoki' to the next person in a RELAY?  You are
> evil.
No I didn't... but that's what my informant gave me. And I realized that
I'd better transcribe that into Roman orthography for the sake of the
sanity of the next person. :-)

> > Nowadays, after persistence and insistence, my dear informant has finally
> > picked up the Roman transcription of Ebisedian, and is therefore able to
> > produce translations which I can send directly. Nevertheless, he is still
> > not very competent in Roman letters, and sometimes gets them wrong. (So I
> > still have an excuse for spelling mistakes in Relays. :-P)
>
> It's convenient, isn't it.  Issytra, who is a native of Teonhea, should have
> translated hejvan as "be absent," in the last Relay, but she got absent
> MINDED and translated it as "be present."  She must have been thinking "not
> be present."  Or she doesn't handle English very well.  At any rate, she
> threw things off!  :)
And the obligatory Tom Lehrer quote:
        Our captain had a handicap to cope with, sad to tell.
        He's from Georgia---and he doesn't speak the language very well!

[snip]
> AAACK!!!!  You just snipped out my plug, with Web address, to my Gospel of
> Bastet selection!!!  I'll read your Esani text if you'll read my Bastet
> poem!! :-} I fully intend to, since I need to find out more about these
> Ebisedi.
_uso'. uso'._ [1]

>         http://www.frontiernet.net/~awen/bastgosp.html
[snip]

Ah, "the kittens of the gods"... that's surely a relic from the feline
days of Teonaht, I presume? :-) As well as all those retractible claw
references, I suppose.

ROTFL!!! "If you are afflicted by gestures..." LMAO...

"It is the goddess Bastet sending you your mice"... LOL, this is so loaded
with double meaning, what with mice being the affliction of kittens and so
on... Uh, I mean, humans. :-)

And what's with this repeated reference to being half-blind? It certainly
strikes one as stemming from a deeper idiom, but I'm at a loss to divine
what that may be.

--------
[1] _uso'_ is actually the weak optative marker in Ebisedian that means "I
really prefer to, but if you insist...". It's supposed to indicate the
speaker's wishes, but much weaker than _oso'_ "I wish". Here, however, it
is not used as an optative marker, but as a highly idiomatic[2] way of
apologizing.

[2] Ebisedian has a lot of highly-idiomatic features[3]. I believe I've
already pointed out how the strong optative marker, _0so'_, which usually
means "my (arrogant) opinion is that ...", can also be used as an answer
to a question, with the meaning of "yes I'll do it".

[3] You'll find that I use this phrase "highly-idiomatic" very often, in
relation to Ebisedian. It's a convenient umbrella term[4] over those
vague, mushy, grey areas of Ebisedian which do not necessarily follow
logically from what one might understand of Ebisedian grammar and
semantics.

[4] Which is, incidentally, better than "liberty term".[5] ;-)

[5] OK, I promise I'll stop nesting footnotes now.[6]

[6] As well as making digs at politics. :-P Oh... I'm sorry, I did it
again... _uso'. uso'._


T

--
No! I'm not in denial!

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