Conceptual metaphors in your conlangs

Museum for the best conlanging and conworldery threads. Ask mods to move threads here.
Post Reply
User avatar
Ulrike Meinhof
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 267
Joined: Wed Apr 20, 2005 12:31 pm
Location: Lund
Contact:

Conceptual metaphors in your conlangs

Post by Ulrike Meinhof »

I'm sure this has been done before, but it's an interesting topic, and I'd love to see what you have come up with.

While thinking about the often cited ARGUMENT IS WAR, I came up with ARGUMENT IS SEX. This has a lot of interesting implications, especially concerning the roles of men and women during an argument.

Instead of "winning" an argument "against" his "opponent", a man can "fertilize" his female "partner". I have yet to figure out what happens when two members of the same sex are arguing, or indeed if a woman could ever (using the ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor) "win". A woman can try to coerce a man into discussing something with her, but he might be "impotent"; likewise she might be "frigid". There's lots of things I haven't yet worked out, for example, what would anal sex represent? Masturbation? Pregnancy?

Which metaphors have you come up with and what are their interesting implications?
Attention, je pelote !

Cedh
Sanno
Sanno
Posts: 938
Joined: Tue Nov 14, 2006 10:30 am
Location: Tübingen, Germany
Contact:

Re: Conceptual metaphors in your conlangs

Post by Cedh »

Dingbats wrote:I have yet to figure out [...] if a woman could ever (using the ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor) "win".
What about "seduce"?

User avatar
WeepingElf
Smeric
Smeric
Posts: 1630
Joined: Wed Mar 08, 2006 5:00 pm
Location: Braunschweig, Germany
Contact:

Post by WeepingElf »

Hair colours in Old Albic are named after metals. Blond hair is "gold", light brown "bronze", red "copper", dark "iron", grey "lead" and white "silver".
...brought to you by the Weeping Elf
Tha cvastam émi cvastam santham amal phelsa. -- Friedrich Schiller
ESTAR-3SG:P human-OBJ only human-OBJ true-OBJ REL-LOC play-3SG:A

User avatar
Ulrike Meinhof
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 267
Joined: Wed Apr 20, 2005 12:31 pm
Location: Lund
Contact:

Re: Conceptual metaphors in your conlangs

Post by Ulrike Meinhof »

cedh audmanh wrote:
Dingbats wrote:I have yet to figure out [...] if a woman could ever (using the ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor) "win".
What about "seduce"?
If we're being strict about CONVICTION IS FERTILIZATION, seduction would be equivalent to making the man convince her.
Attention, je pelote !

User avatar
Přemysl
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 154
Joined: Wed Apr 04, 2007 10:28 pm
Location: Quinnehtkqut

Post by Přemysl »

I wish Baalok would post his THOUGHT is WATER metaphor. It was pretty elaborate with storms, oceans, ships, and islands.

FATE is A RIVER one can float with it, struggle against it's current, be drowning in it, rescued from it or assisted from it. A spouce, family, or very close friends can be fate-swim.buddies.

Bristel
Smeric
Smeric
Posts: 1258
Joined: Mon Jun 01, 2009 3:07 pm
Location: Miracle, Inc. Headquarters
Contact:

Post by Bristel »

I had thought about metaphors a lot when trying to create my conculture for the Hafoc** people.

Water is life and death, with the two major "religions" disagreeing upon what aspects water actually are.

Because they are a bird-like people, they view water as the source of all life, since in water, they find their food, but also send out their exiled upon the ocean in canoes or rafts, which they consider them as-good-as-dead. They view storms (with rain) as a sign that their ancestors or gods are angry.

The earth is a sister to the oceans, and there is an interplay between the two that in most older religions of the Hafoc, represent the basic struggles of life versus death. The word for life is related to water in some cultures of the Hafoc, but with most, life is related to their sun, because they live within the interior of the main continent. There is a lexical and metaphor border that separates the Hafoc littoral and interior, in which languages that fall into those two families are divided.

Most modern Hafoc are quite scientific, although they have not reached industrialization yet. Some of the old metaphors are only used in

And their cousins, which are more "primitive" and much more bird-like (a bit like the differences and similarities between Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis), which they refer to metaphorically as "Our God-like Ancestors", because their relatives happen to retain some flight capability, but the Hafoc do not.

Flight is considered a thing to aspire to, but they refer to it as "the unfair game" or "unfair ability", because they understand the power that flight gives to any animal, and they are somewhat jealous of it.

Dreams are called "flight of the heart", also an allusion to the fact that many dreams do not come true, and that refers back to the "unfairness" of flight.

(Sorry if this is incomplete or seems to be a rambling topic for me, I haven't had a lot of time to flesh out the details of the Hafoc or of their cousins the Seabhac**)

**Hafoc is an Old English word for "hawk", and Seabhac is an Irish word for "hawk" as well.
[bɹ̠ˤʷɪs.təɫ]
Nōn quālibet inīquā cupiditāte illectus hoc agō
Yo te pongo en tu lugar...
Taisc mach Daró

User avatar
Guitarplayer II
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 76
Joined: Wed Aug 23, 2006 4:44 pm
Location: Marburg, Germany
Contact:

Post by Guitarplayer II »

In a flash of creativity I scribbled down the other night (some of these aren't too inventive, but meh):

CARRYING A CHILD IS GROWING FRUIT (obvious idea is obvious)
LOVE IS A GARDEN (huh?)
THINKING IS RUSTLING LEAVES (your brain's one loud computer, dude!)
LIFE IS A SEA JOURNEY (yeah, on the sea!)
RAGE IS A STORM (ditto obvious)
WRITING IS WEAVING (ditto ditto)

Now if I would actually keep that in mind and not reproduced German too often that would be nice.

In Ayeri as well, hair colours are named after metals. Since there is no black metal (pun not intended) I know of, I guess black hair could go by coal.
giˈtaɹ.plɛɪ̯ɚ‿n dɪs.ˈgaɪz • [b][url=http://sanstitre.nfshost.com/sbk]Der Sprachbaukasten[/url][/b]
[size=84]And! [url=http://bit.ly/9dSyTI]Ayeri Reference Grammar[/url] (upd. 28 Sep 2010)[/size]

User avatar
alice
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 707
Joined: Wed Oct 30, 2002 4:43 pm
Location: Three of them

Post by alice »

One I've just noticed is that "to forget" and "to lose" are often related; thus THOUGHTS are OBJECTS. Similarly, "to learn" would be related to "to look for and find".
Zompist's Markov generator wrote:it was labelled" orange marmalade," but that is unutterably hideous.

User avatar
goneriku
Sanci
Sanci
Posts: 52
Joined: Sat Mar 11, 2006 1:03 am
Location: Jacksonville, Fl

Post by goneriku »

Dampantingaya wrote:In Ayeri as well, hair colours are named after metals. Since there is no black metal (pun not intended) I know of, I guess black hair could go by coal.
What about obsidian?

User avatar
brandrinn
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 575
Joined: Sat Sep 18, 2004 10:59 pm
Location: Seoul
Contact:

Post by brandrinn »

MUSIC : MUSIC

"We went to the U2 concert. Boy, it was like listening to music!"
"They really played their instruments during the symphony, if you understand my meaning."
"If Lady GaGa keeps this up, she'll have composed numerous songs and performed at many, many shows."
[quote="Nortaneous"]Is South Africa better off now than it was a few decades ago?[/quote]

User avatar
GreenBowTie
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 179
Joined: Wed Oct 09, 2002 3:17 am
Location: the darkest depths of the bone-chilling night

Post by GreenBowTie »

Society/religion/government/institutions = house

The person on top is "on the roof"; peasants and laymen are in the basement. The public sector and private sector are public and private "rooms". Etc.

User avatar
LinguistCat
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 250
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2006 7:24 pm
Location: Off on the side

Post by LinguistCat »

GreenBowTie wrote:Society/religion/government/institutions = house

The person on top is "on the roof"; peasants and laymen are in the basement. The public sector and private sector are public and private "rooms". Etc.
I like that one a lot. It also gives a feeling that maybe the society that uses it is very communal. "We're all different part of the house or live in different rooms, but it's the same house." Or maybe not...

Childhood/Adolescence = A Tidepool
The stars are an ocean. Your breasts, are also an ocean.

Trailsend
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 169
Joined: Fri Mar 27, 2009 5:50 pm
Contact:

Post by Trailsend »

bricka wrote:One I've just noticed is that "to forget" and "to lose" are often related; thus THOUGHTS are OBJECTS. Similarly, "to learn" would be related to "to look for and find".
"How do you know so much about conceptual metaphors?"

"Oh, you know, it's just something I picked up."

User avatar
Soap
Smeric
Smeric
Posts: 1228
Joined: Sun Feb 16, 2003 2:57 pm
Location: Scattered disc
Contact:

Post by Soap »

Indonesian uses usia pancaroba, which is something like "age" + "turning of the tides", for puberty.
Sunàqʷa the Sea Lamprey says:
Image

Post Reply