Re: Tasratal: sketch: connectives (long)

On Monday, November 5, 2001, at 07:41 , Nik Taylor wrote:

> Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>> My *vague* understanding from various subbed anime is that da is less
>> formal.
>
> Correct.  Da is the plain form, Desu is the polite form.  Desu is also
> used as a politeness marker.
>
Thanks for the clarification.  :-)  (Gosh, I may learn more Japanese from
this list than from my grammars, though I still lust after the Rosetta
Stone teaching-Japanese software...)

ObConlang: How do your conlangs handle register?  For the most part, mine
don't.  The only thing remotely close is Czevraqis personal vs. impersonal
3rd person pronouns, since you can use the impersonal 3rd to refer
insultingly to a person; or the
person/thing-as-representative-of-a-larger-whole marker, which can be used
in a military context by soldiers to their officer sand so on.  I need to
work out more of Tasratal's proposed conculture (which is science
fictional) before I make a decision on how to handle register.

> ObTangeant: A friend of mine overused "desu" when she took Japanese, and
> so she acquired the nickname "Desu", or its variant "The Supreme Desu".
> Now, in the slang of her group of friends, "desu" has taken on the
> meaning of "cool", like "That's very desu".  :-)
>
<laugh>  That's neat.  Also unorthodox...are any of her friends Japanese
speakers?

>> Entropy isn't what it used to be.
>
> Hee hee.  That's a clever one.
>
:-)  For someone who quit physics after honors E&M in college, I have way
too much fun with physics jokes.

Yoon Ha Lee [requiescat@cityofveils.com]
http://pegasus.cityofveils.com

Plasma is another matter.

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