[YG Conlang Archives] > [ceqli group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
Rex May - Baloo wrote:
>
> on 3/7/02 10:34 PM, Ray Bergmann at rayber@hidden.email wrote:
>
> Rex:-> You could be right. If so, how about zoype instead
> of bupe?
> Ray:-> Possibly, but "zoy" is Chinese ling2 which is
> "nulo" in Esperanto and "zero" in Ido, Interlingua and
> English. For "no(thing)", chinese uses "mei2(shen2me)"
> which means "without-thing", Esperanto uses "nenio", Ido
> uses "nulo" and Interlingua uses "nil"! All of these
> languages have separate words for "no/not": bu4 (Chinese),
> ne (Esperanto and Ido) and "non" in Interlingua. For
> "no-one/nobody", Chinese uses "mei2ren2" (without-person),
> Esperanto uses "neniu", Ido Uses "nulu" and Interlingua
> uses "necuno", with a separate entry "nullitate" for when
> "nobody" means "a non-entity". Esperanto uses either
> "senvalorulo" or "nulo/nulu" for that meaning, and Ido
> uses either "senvalora homo" or "zero/zeru".
>
> So your "zoype" would mean "nobody = non-entity" and the
> ceqli word for "nobody = without-person" would be "sinpe".
>
>
> they would, I suppose, if we're to follow the usages of Chinese and
> Esperanto. BTW, mei2 means other things than 'without,' I believe.
> But no matter. I think zoype could work on the basis of the
> analogy.
>
> Goda ten zoysi banana. We have zero bananas. (Which means nothing
> more or less than we have no bananas).
[...]
In fact, <mei2> is the negator of <you3> "to have". In Mandarin,
rather than say "We have no bananas.", we say "We not have bananas."
("Wo3men mei2(you) xiang1jiao1.") So, the equivalent would be "Goda
buten banana."
(This seems a bit more "logical". If there are zero bananas, how can
we have them?)
--
Mike Wright
http://www.CoastalFog.net
_____________________________________________________
"China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese."
-- Charles de Gaulle