Re: Gender in conlangs (was: Re: Umlauts (was Re: Elves and Ill Bethisad))

--- Isidora Zamora <isidora@...> wrote:

> >Makes sense. The body is not the person -
> >that's a well known precept in Telerani
> > spirituality! I don't think I have a
> >Talarian word for corpse
> >yet, but of course, its gender will be
> >dictated by etymology and may well be
> > animate. :)
> >
> >Daine languages have genders (but I'm not
> >exactly
> >sure how they function). I do know they too
> >would
> >consider the dead body as inanimate, or not a
> >person.
> As I said, I think that the answer to the
> question is culturally
> significant.  It can have a good deal to do
> with the metaphysics of the culture involved.
Absolutely. I agree. I just don't have the
answers yet! ;)

> For Orthodox Christians, for example, the
> person is both the spirit and the
> body together - a psycosomatic unity.
Daine would agree with that stance. The person
that is alive now exists because his "shi" or
energy has bound together his spirit-soul with a
body and a mind.

> When the soul and the body become
> separated, death ensues.
Yes. Except the other way around. When the "shi"
dissipates, the spirit-soul is liberated, the
mind disintigrates and the body dies. The person
that was, obviously, ceases to exist. Yet the
person that is (the spirit-soul) continues on.

> You are then left with a lifeless corpse,
> which I
> would see as inanimate (I've only been to a few
> funerals, but I definately
> perceived the corpse as both human and
> inanimate at the same time), and living soul.
I mentioned inanimacy in Talarian only because
they only have two grammatical genders to choose
from. I very much consider my parents to be
animate beings, yet they would repsectively be
matar and patar - both are gramatically
inanimate! This is a function of their stem
formation, in -ar, and the history of Talarian
nominal morphology that levelled everything to
-as and -ar.

> However, a soul separated from
> its body may be alive, but it
> is very definitely *not* in its natural state.
Here a Daine would certainly disagree, though a
Telerani would probably concur. The Daine
understand the spirit-soul to exist in its own
sort of reference frame (obviously, not how a
Daine would describe it!), at times a spirit-soul
comes into this world and becomes a Daine, other
times it goes to another world and lives in a
body there, still other times it may wander this
world, a nother world or even between worlds.
Disembodied as it were. A Daine (monk) might say
"My body has dwelt in a cave, it has dwelt in a
house, it shall dwell yet under the stars;
likewise, I have lived in the body of another, I
now live in this body and I shall yet live
between." She understands that the body doesn't
define the person, but does give it a place to
bide.

> Its natural state is to be
> together with its body.  This problem will be
> corrected at the
> resurrection, when the bodies of the dead will
> be raised and reunited with their souls.
There is enough christian philosophy to have
influenced Telerani thought in this direction,
though I think they generally espouse truncated
reincarnation. That is, you reincarnate until you
attain to the Kingdom. Of course, when you find
yourself within the Kingdom, the body ceases to
be relevant, but some believe that a reuniting of
spiritual and physical forms will take place
ultimately.

Of course, even for Talarian monks, that's all
very speculative and is considered unimportant
compared with the trivial profundity of
discovering yourself already at Rest in the
Kingdom!

> My Cwendaso/Tovláug do not have that much
> knowledge about what happens
> after death.  They do believe that the
> soul/spirit/whatever survives, i.e.
> it is not annihilated, but that is about all
> they know.  They have a
> profound reverence for human life in general,
> and they treat corpses and
> human bones with the utmost care and reverence,
> and have no fear of
> them.  They might possibly gender human remains
> as epicene to give them the
> dignity of something human and also so that
> corpses can be made male or
> female by verbal agreement.  Or they might also
> gender them as inanimate to
> show up the contrast that the corpse used to be
> a living, breathing human
> being, and now it is most definately not
> (although it is still most
> definately human, and will never cease to be.)
> One additional piece of
> information that might possible figure in or
> might not is that somewhere
> between 1500-2000 years ago, the ancestors of
> the Cwendaso/Tovláug were
> anamists and ancestor worshipers.  This might
> possibly affect how human
> remains are seen today,
Sure. If you have a great respect for your
ancestors, I'd think you might tend to continue
personalising their remains.

> but that seems unlikely to me, because there
> was a
> sharp split between the people who kept the old
> religion and the ones who
> accepted the new religion and became the
> Tovláug/Cwendaso.  The Tovláug
> essentially rejected the entire religion of
> their forfathers and migrated
> and became a separate people.  It seems
> unlikely that too many relics of
> the old religion would have remained.
Possibly. Even so, there are a lot of Jewish and
Pagan elements that live on in Christian
religions, even though they are changed somewhat.
It is certainly possible that some important
aspect of the old religion survived.

> (And in case you were wondering, the
> two names are because the Trehelish, their
> southern neighbors, call them
> "Cwendaso" i.e. "the people of the Cwendas
> Mountains," and they call
> themselves "Tovláugad," that is, "The
> Instructed."  The singular is "Tovláug.")
Ah, interesting! "The Instructed" meaning what?
What are they instructed in?

I don't think I ever said, but "Daine" is the
native name and means "People" (s. Tana);
Wildings is what most Men call them. "Daine" is
often prefixed by some other name element and is
used to distinguish amongst the various
ethnicities and races of Daine. Such as
Sharrundaine (Sun People, who inhabit
Westmarche); Troaghladaine (Slave People, who
live all about); Hautheredaine (Boat People, who
sail upon the seas).

I mentioned long ago that Talarian comes from
Talar + Arias, "Lords of the Land".

Padraic.


=====
To him that seeks, if he knock, the door will be opened;
if he seeks, he shall find his way; if he searches for a way, he shall find his path.
For though the Way is narrow, it's wisdom is written in the hearts of all:
if ye would seek and find Rest, look first within!  [The Petricon]

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