Re: Diffrent possessions

Ray Brown wrote:
> Not so difficult per_se, I think. There is much currently in the news
> about "identity theft". If something can be stolen, then someone must have
> owned it. The thing is that 'arrival' is not something that can be stolen!
Neither is "identity". "Identity theft" is somewhat like "English horn"
in that the meaning can't be deduced from the individual meanings of the
words that make it up. One unfortunate thing is now that "theft" has
been used in so many phrases like "theft of service", "identity theft",
and "intellectual property theft", some people are starting to use
"theft" as a shorthand for one or more of these misleading phrases,
essentially redefining "theft".

This actually is one of the things I've been thinking about recently
while working on the Minza vocabulary: for the definition of "lhaki"
I've had to be more precise with the meaning. In previous languages I
could get away with just using "steal" as a one-word definition, but
"steal" is another of those English words that's being redefined.
(Identity theft in Minza doesn't have anything to do with "lhaki", but
is probably more closely associated with "gubi", which means "to use
without permission or authorization". Now all I need is a word that
means "identification"....)