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on 2/15/03 1:52 AM, Rob Speer at rspeer@hidden.email wrote: > On Thu, Feb 13, 2003 at 05:42:11PM -0700, Rex May - Baloo wrote: >> Mike Wright makes this suggestion: >> >> "Seems like if you want to maintain the frer-frero-freri system, you >> need something more like: >> >> jin - person (Sino-Japanese equiv. of Mandarin ren2) >> jino - male person >> jini - female person" >> >> He suggests this instead of xi-jo-su >> reactions? > > I say forget frer-frero-freri. The big deal about Ceqli is how easy it > is to make compound words, so why not do it that way with > frer/frerjo/frerxi? > > Vowel-changing word endings are for Esperanto. Here's my reasoning. Kinship terms in particular are going to often be compounds. Pamipamofreri is unambiguous. It means the sister of one's mother's father. But Pamxipamjofrerxi would be confusing. Second, there's a split over whether father should be jopam or pamjo. The Mandarin way is the first, my instinctive Western way is the second. And both make sense. A male parent vs. a parental male. So that amplifies point one. And we can still use xi and jo as nouns meaning female and male. Kelner - to perform a waiter's duties. Kelnerjin - waiter/ress Kelnerjini or Kelnerxi - waitress Kelnerjino or Kelnerjo - waiter Note that Kelnerjini means a human female waitperson, but Kelnerxi just means a female entity that is a waitperson, but on the practical level, they are interchangeable. And, used as nouns or pronouns, xi and jo are also very broad in meaning - female entity and male entity, but again, in practical terms, they'll most often refer to people, and be in effect the same as jini and jino. And I'm thinking of the -o and -i as pseudomorphemes, i. e., they're not active combining forms at all, so we can regard the pattern of fil/filo/fili as a happy coincidence, a mnemonic that helps us remember the meaning. And, speaking of happy accidents, it's a nice coincidence that Jin contains the J of Jo and the i of Xi, and is therefore also a nice mnemonic. -- >PLEASE NOTE MY NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS: rmay@hidden.email > Rex F. May (Baloo) > Daily cartoon at: http://www.cnsnews.com/cartoon/baloo.asp > Buy my book at: http://www.kiva.net/~jonabook/gdummy.htm > Language site at: http://www.geocities.com/ceqli/Uploadexp.htm >Discuss my auxiliary language at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ceqli/