zompist bboard

A small number from proto-Lamu, a descendant of Khulls. There are only three vowels, the tones are gone, and labialized consonants are gone, but some new contrasts, such as gemination of consonants and true palatals, have opened up:

tulip "wheel"
haŋ "cloud" (read /ŋ/ as "ng")
kaśi "sword" (if "kashi" is considered a word)
hut "war"
kiŋ "urine"
tāki "palm wine" (taki is a variant spelling of a breed of horse, according to Wikt)
tutta "flower" (italian, not english)
rupis "sun" (if rupee is spelled rupi, this is the plural; it's also apparently a valid English word for "escarpments on another planet or a moon", which is interesting because I didnt know that Latin ever allowed -es --> -is plurals; we might have made it up looking at the Latin entry, however)

and possibly
rāmp "vagina" if I decide to allow the cluster /mp/ in final position

Speaking of which, ugina, vugina, and vagina are all acceptable variants (the initial syllable is a classifier prefix) of the Andanese word for rain. The -gina part of the word originally meant "snow", but the primordial word for rain was pushed out of the vocabulary by Andanese's extreme sound changes. Thus, the word for rain can be analyzed as "snow water"; however, the word for snow now also needs a classifier prefix, so their word for snow is gagina.

The word in Gala (a close relative of Andanese) for "pad" (anything soft and protective) is hugē. However, this word will probably need a classifier prefix such as ha-, which denotes items of clothing, or ni-, which denotes hygiene products, for proper usage.

repair "catfish" ... from Mumba, a distant ancestor of all of the above languages.

Bumping instead of editing my post just in case anyone else has words to contribute.

One of the names of the primary deity of the Poswob religion is Table. However, this is not one of her more common names; the commonest name is Maptavem. The same goddess is also called Sàga or some slight variant of the name in various related languages; the Poswa and Pabappa form of this name is Saba, which is technically also an English word, though not one I've ever heard before.

Soap wrote:Saba, which is technically also an English word, though not one I've ever heard before.

You mean the ancient Arabian kingdom?

Anyway, I have another: Classical Ultevian casini "shining, shimmering, sparkling" < PIE *ḱas- "grey, hare."

Saba is a kind of fish in Japanese. Mackerel, I think.

Soap wrote:repair "catfish" ... from Mumba, a distant ancestor of all of the above languages.

For whatever reason, this amuses me to a high degree.

Thank you : )

Update: redid the vocab for late Andanese from scratch.... vagina means "snowman" now instead of just "snow", and is invariable rather than being just an optional free variant of another word. But Late Andanese word space is pretty much used up ... *any* phonologically valid word is guaranteed to mean *something*


... what's rare is the words that actually make sense
. E.g. in this case , snowman is va "golem"plus gina"snow"
.
More impressive to me at least is this:

Old Khulls /yen/ "currency unit of STW".... where STW is a corporation comprised that introduced it's own currency and was started by immigrants. So it matches English "yen" which also signatures a foreign currency.
Later, Khulls does an unconditional sound change, making the word /en/, matching the modern Japanese form of the same word.