[YG Conlang Archives] > [ceqli group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
Rex May - Baloo wrote: > > on 3/29/02 11:53 AM, Mike Wright at darwin@hidden.email wrote: > > > Rex May - Baloo wrote: > >> > >> Mike convince me that 'ga' shouldn't be used for 'very,' so I've taken 'tre' > >> for that. Now. For the word 'many, much', I've been using 'gasi.' 'Si' > >> means number, amount. So we have > >> gasi pani a lot of water > >> pisi pan a little bread > >> gosi pe many people > >> pisi hon a few books > >> Any contradiction there? > > > > Not as long as "gosi pe" is a typo for "gasi pe". > Yes. I need to change the typeface or something. Look almost exactly alike > to me. For me, too. All of my mono-spaced fonts seem to be sans serif, except for Courier, which I detest. I need to build myself a mono-spaced version of Times Roman or Garamond. > > However, not having morphemes for "many/much" and "few/little" means > > that we can't create neat Mandarin-style compounds for "majority" > > (<duo1shu4> = many-number) and "minority" (<shao3shu4> = few-number). > > (I'm not fond of "gasisi" and "pisisi".) There will undoubtedly be > > many other compounds that we'd like to form with those two words > > (think of all the English words with "multi-" and "poly-"), and I > > really feel that they "deserve" to be morphemes. > > Very true. > > > > How about "pali" or "poli", from "poly-"? Or, "dwo" from Mandarin? For > > the other, "kam" from Hindustani /k@m/ "little"/"less" might work. > > > > As far as that goes, English "meni" and "fyu" would both work. > > I like fyu. "meni" won't fit morphology. Oops. > I'd like poli, but kind of want it > to be a single syllable. And I think I want to prohibit 'wo' combination. Do you find it hard to pronounce? Or hard to distinguish from some other sound? > I think. Hindi 'dal' in one meaning, is 'large number.' Go with that? > > Go ten dal(si) kan. I have many dogs. > Go ten dal(si) pani. I have much water. I don't think "si" is needed. "Dalsi" could be "majority" and "fyusi", "minority". > (no need for much/many distinction, right?) Right. Even English seems to be losing it. By the way, what are we going to use to form comparatives and superlatives? Would "more" be "pludal", and "fewer/less" be "plufyu"? What about "most" and "fewest/least"? -- Mike Wright http://www.CoastalFog.net ____________________________________________________________ "The difference between theory and practice is that, in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice, however, there is." -- Anonymous