Re: ONOMATOPOEIA: Check out "Cross Linguistic Phonethemes"

On Mon, 1 Apr 2002 19:57:33 +0200 Irina Rempt <irina@...> writes:
> On Monday 01 April 2002 06:12, Steg Belsky wrote:
> > Rokbeigalmki's gender system is based on physical sex - there are
> > four genders: |o| /o/ male, |i| /i/ female, |uh| /V/
> > neutral/common/epicene, and |u| /u/ neuter/inanimate.
> > Groups of mixed sex, individuals of unknown or irrelevant sex, and
> > sexless animates use the |uh| gender;  inanimate objects like
> rocks use  |u|.

> Exactly like the Ilaini gender system, in fact. What about animals?
> In
> Ilaini they're never "it", usually epicene, and sometimes masculine
> or
> feminine when it's relevant (for instance if you want your mare
> serviced).
>    Irina
-

Same thing in Rokbeigalmki!  In fact, if you genderize a living creature
(whether human, animal, or plant) with the neuter gender, for instance
|u-mald| "it-human", |u-yagul| "it-fish", or |u-slyihths| "it-snaketree",
it means that you're referring to either something dead, or an inanimate
representation like a statue.  I'm not sure what to do with robots;
luckily the Rokbeigalm are only at a stone-age technological level, so i
don't really have to worry about that.  :-)


-Stephen (Steg)
 "eze-dabobt sha'd��g-a tze-a wa'laur amilm-a oolu'nyih-yed esh,
  i wa'laur amalm-a oolu'nyih-yij sa'sem-a tze-a;
  fa'gaur uhzu-vuhlor sha'yahhak�v, i uhzu-diishag sha'ragesp-a tzo-a..."