Re: weekly vocab

At 07:41 AM 4/3/2002 -0500, Muke wrote:
>  For example, zoo week, wherein
> > the 5 (or 10) words would all have to do with the zoo. Or the computer wee,
> > or the stew week, or the birthday week, or...
>
>The problem with something like that is... well, even with diverse vocab like
>this week's people already say things like 'my conculture doesn't have this'
>(birch trees are based on location, werewolves on mythology, etc.)  I imagine
>quite a few people would be left out with semantic fields like 'computer'
>for a
>week...

    On the other hand, Languages are supposed to be able to communicate
something, possibly even anything. Even if there isn't a unique word for
any given concept, circumlocutions could be used. The Bible _has_ been
translated into languages that don't have a word for God, or that don't
have palm trees, or camels, or... So, if your lang doesn't have a word for
birch, then how would your speakers, upon seeing one for the first time,
name it? Words for car, gun, alcohol, and such in Native American languages
being great examples (often translate as something like white:man's-horse
or the infamous fire-water, for example).


>A sentence-of-the-week, even if it doesn't use the week's vocabulary, is a
>good
>idea, especially if it requires more complex grammatical constructs than
>generic
>'subject phrase verb-phrases object phrase'.
   Good idea. I'll try to remember to vary grammar considerably in them.

   Aidan

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