zompist bboard

All Almean species should be understood as "something like" their Terran counterparts. So a bardinó/muchye is something like a coyote or jackal.

For those who didn't know (I had to look it up), coyotes and jackals are related, but are considered different species. But they don't coexist-- jackals are Old World, coyotes are New World. They're not like asses and donkeys, which are alternate names for the same species.

As for the Portuguese pronouns, my understanding is that tu is intimate, not despective, so it's not just a matter of rank.

zompist wrote:As for the Portuguese pronouns, my understanding is that tu is intimate, not despective, so it's not just a matter of rank.

I suppose... IIRC "thou" was lost in English exactly because it tilted more toward despective than intimate, so much so that it came to be seen as an insult, and then close family members quit using it with each other... so there's a precedent there.

http://linguistics.stackexchange.com/qu ... using-thou

(Addendum: Speaking of English, I wonder if perhaps the example conversation in Dhekhnami could be interpreted as involving Wat Porridgeton after he got command of the language and went to Ornakh to look for work. Or perhaps just after he found work and it's his day off, since the Earthling is behaving here more like a tourist than a job-seeker.)