Obscure etymologies

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David Rabinowitz
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Obscure etymologies

Post by David Rabinowitz »

Being interested in historical linguistics, I have always been fascinated by words whose origins we can't quite trace back to any one word with any degree of certainty. Some pretty basic words in English have very tentative or incomplete etymologies, e.g. bad, dog, girl. I understand that this is due to mostly to a gap in our knowledge, and there are many reasons for that: patchy attestation, loans from unexpected sources, seemingly absurd semantic leaps, implausible/sporadic sound changes, etc.

However, when creating conlangs, we are in control of everything. For some people, that's a good thing. For others, like me, this is a constant nag. Real languages are messy. They have strange words that seemingly come out of nowhere, and whose origin no one can really explain. Now, as the designer of a conlang, I will never not know where a word comes from – the best I can do is try to emulate the bizarreness of natlangs' histories. (This is mostly an epistemological problem, namely that of trying to attain the 'aesthetic' or 'emotional' effect of a gap in knowledge where such gaps are, by definition, impossible. Well, I could just have a word from a random root that just pops up in the 14th century and say "etymology unknown", but that's not very satisfying, especially since my conlangs tend to be a posteriori Indo-European languages.)

I find that it adds a certain flavour to a language to have some words that modern linguists wouldn't be able to reconstruct to a proto-language or trace as a simple loan. But... since I have to know the origin of the word (because, well, I'm creating it), I find this difficult to do.

Do you lot care that your conlangs (esp. a posteriori ones) might get a bit too predictable? Do you also try to create obscure etymologies? If so, what's your strategy? I generally try to look at words from natlangs whose origins are unknown by linguists and do something similar, but it seldom feels right... are you also afflicted by this, or am I just too angsty?

EDIT: also, I would love examples from your conlangs, or particularly interesting ones from natlangs (for inspiration).

(first post btw, so yay?)

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Re: Obscure etymologies

Post by mèþru »

I know that zompist actually has unknown etymologies for some of his Verdurian words because Verdurian's ancestors were backwards derived and he couldn't find reasonable ancestors for some of his words. I plan on backwards deriving the ancestors of a lot of my languages, so that might happen to me as well (probably will just change the words, few things are set in stone for my languages (which is part of the reason for why I never posted the entirety of what I have made so far for any of my conlangs)).
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
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Re: Obscure etymologies

Post by Soap »

Nice to meet you, I hope you enjoy your time here.

I'm a lot like both of you, I think. My explanation for the scarcity of loanwords between my languages is that humans on planet Teppala are more culturally isolated from each other than humans on Earth traditionally have been, but it's a weak explanation since essentially all of the exciting history on the planet happens when human cultures mix with each other and have wars and peace treaties and such. But yes, out of aesthetics, I plan to have not even a single word in any language with an unknown etymology. I will simply say that some words from the parent language survived in only one branch of the family.

Working backwards is much more difficult than working forwards, yes, I am in that position too. However the plus side is that I get to decide what the daughter language words will be directly, and then work out explanations for how they got that way, which is good for me because the focus time of my conworld is the most recent stage of development of the languages, not something further back in time.
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Re: Obscure etymologies

Post by mèþru »

Also, Welcome to the ZBB! Have some pickles and tea! (It's a board tradition for welcoming new members).
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ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
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David Rabinowitz
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Re: Obscure etymologies

Post by David Rabinowitz »

Soap wrote:Nice to meet you, I hope you enjoy your time here.
mèþru wrote:pickles and tea
Thank you!
mèþru wrote:backward derivation
I've used this approach in the past, but, of course, only in my [ill-fated] attempts at a prioriing a language into existence. Nothing wrong with doing this, but for me diachrony is not a pesky afterthought, it's one of the main pleasures of conlanging. Even my more recent stabs at languages from entirely fictional language families had to have a proto-language with at least basic phonology and morphosyntax before I could even start thinking about the language I was 'really' creating.

(EDIT: I realise that too much of a focus on this may have people spiralling into psychotic frenzy that ends up in some sort of Proto-World spoken 7 millennia before the language that's one's stated goal (conlanging on peyote gets 2 stars from this reviewer). I'm usually content with just going one or two stages into the past though.)
Soap wrote:I will simply say that some words from the parent language survived in only one branch of the family.
I've done this with some PIE roots that I adapted into PGmc and claimed had descendants only in East Germanic. (My primary conlanging project is an East Germanic language meant to be spoken in modern-day central/eastern Europe.)

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Re: Obscure etymologies

Post by elemtilas »

David Rabinowitz wrote:Being interested in historical linguistics, I have always been fascinated by words whose origins we can't quite trace back to any one word with any degree of certainty. Some pretty basic words in English have very tentative or incomplete etymologies, e.g. bad, dog, girl. I understand that this is due to mostly to a gap in our knowledge, and there are many reasons for that: patchy attestation, loans from unexpected sources, seemingly absurd semantic leaps, implausible/sporadic sound changes, etc.

However, when creating conlangs, we are in control of everything. For some people, that's a good thing. For others, like me, this is a constant nag. Real languages are messy. They have strange words that seemingly come out of nowhere, and whose origin no one can really explain. Now, as the designer of a conlang, I will never not know where a word comes from – the best I can do is try to emulate the bizarreness of natlangs' histories. (This is mostly an epistemological problem, namely that of trying to attain the 'aesthetic' or 'emotional' effect of a gap in knowledge where such gaps are, by definition, impossible. Well, I could just have a word from a random root that just pops up in the 14th century and say "etymology unknown", but that's not very satisfying, especially since my conlangs tend to be a posteriori Indo-European languages.)

I find that it adds a certain flavour to a language to have some words that modern linguists wouldn't be able to reconstruct to a proto-language or trace as a simple loan. But... since I have to know the origin of the word (because, well, I'm creating it), I find this difficult to do.

Do you lot care that your conlangs (esp. a posteriori ones) might get a bit too predictable? Do you also try to create obscure etymologies? If so, what's your strategy? I generally try to look at words from natlangs whose origins are unknown by linguists and do something similar, but it seldom feels right... are you also afflicted by this, or am I just too angsty?
In all honesty, it could be that you áre just a tadge angsty about this! I don't know how long you've been at this (glossopoets just starting out tend be angstiest of all, e.g.); but I think also your perspective on the Art may also have something to do with it. From what I gather above, we come at this art from two very distinct directions. You describe yourself as "designer" and maker, one that is "in control" and must know the inmost workings of all aspects of the language because, well, you deliberately made it that way. And it kind of makes sense that you'd be angsty over the task of creating a word with no known etymology, because, well, you'd actually know the etymology and the word's whole history!

I come at this art with the philosophy of discovery & invention, rather than making & crafting. When a word rises up through the metaphorical gumbo of my imagination, I don't always know what it is for or where it comes from. Sometimes the etymology will be obvious --- like you, I've done several IE languages, so etymologies are sometimes cooky-cutter; other times, not so. I don't really bother myself too much about not knowing. I figure, the speakers of the language don't know the word's origin, so why should I fret myself with worry about it too? It may be that the etymology will become clearer in time, and that's swell! But then again, it may just remain a mystery, and that's okay with me too!
EDIT: also, I would love examples from your conlangs, or particularly interesting ones from natlangs (for inspiration).
I'll offer a section from Grammar of the Avantimannish Tongue:

"...Yet, Aryan is not the earliest ancestral language of the Avantimen. If we examine an example of Avantimannish and then look at its ancestral forms through past ages: the verb pair qenen and
qanen. The one means to create or publish or introduce; the other means to know or can. First we look backwards towards the Old Avantimannish pair: qenien / qonen, which would have been
spoken around the 1000s of the present age; and then the Old Thietish pair: caunyenen / cunnen which was spoken in the 600s. This in turn harkens back to the pre-Thietish Asvaric period:
kanniyenan / kunnan. The Asvaric period occured between the 100s and 400s of the present age, and is also known to be the time of the Great Migration, which brought many kindreds of Rum,
Hellades, Asvares and Kemeteians into the Eastlands.

"We note how the now fully absorbed pre-Thietish verb kekennan has been assumed into the morphing kanniyenan, and results in a single new verb with meanings as diverse as “fashion, make, create” and “get to know, become familiar with”.
And then we look even further back into the remote days of the Aryan wanderings, after the Great Flood and the break-up of the Puntish realm, whose language came to be spoken some 5000 years before the present age. At this point, the root words in question were genâ- and gegene-. Before the Aryans and their distant cousins, the Shemans, took to wandering away from their ruined ancestral realms, we meet the archaic empire of the Punt. Their words, if we can but locate and then decypher the submerged petroglyphs, were: HoJaaN and GheGHeeNG.

"It is here we must rest in our journey for many thousands of years, for the Punt inhabited the lush regions of the Inland Sea since at least fifteen thousand years before the present age, and in that time a mighty empire arose in which much wisdom and lore was learned and preserved and much new knowledge was discovered. The Puntish era is about as far back as we can go, philologically speaking, with any certain reliability. For they had written records, some of which may still be read by the Wise. Otherwise, the few words that are known from external sources have been a great help to the philologers of the West, at least.

"Beyond that horizon of the distant past lies the mists of legend and the fog of myth, for even Punt had their origins with a scion of the Tlatlan, a race of Atelanteans who on the one hand gave rise to mighty Kemet and also intermarried with an ancient seafaring empire known only as Tettuz, and it is their descendants that gave rise to the Punt. Now, the modern dynasty of Abyssinian emperors claims an Israelite descent, it is truly the Tettuz originating some twenty thousand years ago that are their earliest ancestors. And it is from a very ancient Tettuzian magial name that the Loucarian personal name Niningus appears, meaning “Mighty in Art”. Those wandering Tettuzan mages who came up to Kemeteia from the destruction and break-up of their homeland some three thousand years before the present age were known by their ancient name, Dnê Dnê, or “He Who Creates”.

"Before this time, all is obscured and shrouded by myth and legend, lost to the probings and researches of historiographers. All that is known by the Daine and Teor is that in the fifteen thousand years before the rise of Punt, Atelante and Tettuz, Men were inhabiting the eastern vales of Vandashanno — those lands that would some day become Kemeteia-Misser — and were practicing a very archaic form of agriculture. Before that time, very primitive Men, thought by the Daine who met them to be little more than clever beasts, had begun to come out of Lybia and undertook the first great migration into the wastrel stretches of southern Eosphora, now the lands of Ehran and the Hindish empires. Nothing at all is known, or truly can be known, of what manner tongue these ancient people spoke, for they left no records of their own and none others thought to record and preserve what might have been recorded of their ancient speech."

So, here we bring the etymology of a Germanic conlang's words back to perhaps 20000 years or more before the present time.

Other words, I'm nowhere near as lucky!

Several Talarian words have no known etymology, or foggy ones at best. Haranar is a ritual language & harxar is a burdensome grief, but no one knows whence they come into the language. There are, naturally, many borrowings as well, and often times the etymology isn't known any further back than that.

I just chalk it up to it being a mystery and leave it at that!
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Re: Obscure etymologies

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For my conlang Tormiott I've documented where all words came from. I really enjoy deriving words from others and thinking how their meanings might change over time. I rarely mark a word with etymology unknown.

Sometimes though I forget how I ended up with a certain meaning, based on the morphemes that make up the word. For example:

- amatho /ˈamɪθʊ/ (v) to sniffle.
This word consists of a transitive prefix (a-) and matho, a preposition which basically means up, upward or a verb which has to do with going upward. Matho itself breaks down into math-, a prefix meaning on or over the top, or high and a preposition and verb o which in fact covers very similar meanings. So how that tautological mess came to mean to sniffle, I really don't know.

- tentethgo /ˈtəntəθʕʊ/ (v) to be reckless, to be irresponsible.
This word consists of tente-, a prefix meaning bouncing, and thgo, a small lidless container or basket. I mean, I can kind of see how making a lidless container bounce would be a careless thing to do, but it's still a little odd.

My conlang is a little over 8 years old, and I only work on it every now and then, a little at a time, so these odd little etymologies make for fun surprises years down the road... (I'm easily entertained, I guess)
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Re: Obscure etymologies

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elemtilas wrote:I don't know how long you've been at this (glossopoets just starting out tend be angstiest of all, e.g.)
Funny, I feel it's quite the opposite in my case. When I started conlanging, as an early teen, give or take 12 years ago, I was very relaxed about all this. I suppose the more I learnt, the more I worried. I actually think that's a good thing, it's not like I'm suffering here ;)
elemtilas wrote:From what I gather above, we come at this art from two very distinct directions. (...)
discovery & invention ... making & crafting
Thank you for your response, but I can't help but feel I'm being condescended to a little bit..? Like you're the cool guy offering me a reefer and telling me to go with the flow and I'm a kvetchy little pedant in a bowtie mumbling about equations? :p
din wrote:Sometimes though I forget how I ended up with a certain meaning, based on the morphemes that make up the word.
Ah, yes, I love this too! I try to document non-trivial semantic drift, but I love it when I look a word's definition and I need to force myself to rediscover the path it took in my head at the time... (And isn't the connection that when sniffling we draw air inward and up, kinda..?) Anyway, thanks for you examples!

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Re: Obscure etymologies

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David Rabinowitz wrote:
elemtilas wrote:From what I gather above, we come at this art from two very distinct directions. (...)
discovery & invention ... making & crafting
Thank you for your response, but I can't help but feel I'm being condescended to a little bit..? Like you're the cool guy offering me a reefer and telling me to go with the flow and I'm a kvetchy little pedant in a bowtie mumbling about equations? :p
Oh, not at all! There's simply more than one way to go about this as I'm sure you are aware!

Just to clarify, however: in your original post, you're the one that brought up being angsty, not me! So I'm not laying anything on you. It's simply that I've noticed over the years that conlangers who approach the art from the design & build philosophy tend to be, but are not always a little more angsty about things not being just so. Based on how you introduced yourself, I simply wonder if there is not some correlation here.

I certainly can't tell you how to make conlangs, and would never presume to try. I offer you no better-or-worse analysis. I am simply stating a perspective that you, as of yet, may not have considered before!
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Re: Obscure etymologies

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For me, it's a mix, I suppose. I want Tirina to be semi-realistic, so I want to have etymologies for most words, but like you say, actual realism would mean not having known etymologies for everything! So here's some of my thoughts on the subject:

If you're creating an a priori language, you just have to accept that at a certain point, you will be inventing words wholesale. Even if you create a proto-language and then derive most or all of your modern words from it, you still have to invent the proto-language. You mentioned you're mostly doing PIElangs, so I suppose this would come up less for you, but still: you will have to invent some words out of thin air. Perhaps mentally accepting this (and consciously trying to get rid of the feeling that it's "wrong") will help you be more comfortable with it?

As for where I get words from, sometimes I derive a word from a real-world language... but that's not the in-world etymology of the word. For example, the other day, I came across a nice Mongolian word that I wanted to incorporate. Even better, Tirina realistically could've picked it up from Mongolian, because there are a number of speakers in the same area! The only problem is that the timeline didn't match up at all. It was a word from Proto-Mongolic, which was spoken less than a thousand years ago, whereas the Tirina word would've had to be much older. So I put a little note in my dictionary that says something like, "some linguists suggest a link to Proto-Mongolic whatever, but this seems unlikely because XYZ" or maybe suggesting it was from an even older form of the language. The word does have an out-of-universe etymology, and I want to keep a record of it, even though it can't be the in-universe etymology.

Although I rarely create words with totally unknown etymologies for Modern Tirina, I do confess that I usually craft the proto-Tirina forms so that, when subjected to sound changes, they yield something pleasing in Modern Tirina... so from that perspective, even when I create a word with an etymology, I still am deliberately shaping it so it'll turn out the way I want it to.
I generally forget to say, so if it's relevant and I don't mention it--I'm from Southern Michigan and speak Inland North American English. Yes, I have the Northern Cities Vowel Shift; no, I don't have the cot-caught merger; and it is called pop.

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Re: Obscure etymologies

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alynnidalar wrote:As for where I get words from, sometimes I derive a word from a real-world language... but that's not the in-world etymology of the word. For example, the other day, I came across a nice Mongolian word that I wanted to incorporate. Even better, Tirina realistically could've picked it up from Mongolian, because there are a number of speakers in the same area! The only problem is that the timeline didn't match up at all. It was a word from Proto-Mongolic, which was spoken less than a thousand years ago, whereas the Tirina word would've had to be much older. So I put a little note in my dictionary that says something like, "some linguists suggest a link to Proto-Mongolic whatever, but this seems unlikely because XYZ" or maybe suggesting it was from an even older form of the language. The word does have an out-of-universe etymology, and I want to keep a record of it, even though it can't be the in-universe etymology.
One thing I've done on several occasions is to flip-flop the etymology. Especially if it's a word I like or has the right feel to it. For example, in stead of saying that the Tirina word comes from Pr.Mong., try it the other way around: craft the etymology so that the cool Proto-Mongolian word is derived from whatever ancient ancestor of Tirina was current in that time frame! This way, you get the Tirina word you like, and the modern Mongolian word and also more or less the etymology you like. The only thing you've tinkered with is the age of the word and the direction of borrowing.
Although I rarely create words with totally unknown etymologies for Modern Tirina, I do confess that I usually craft the proto-Tirina forms so that, when subjected to sound changes, they yield something pleasing in Modern Tirina... so from that perspective, even when I create a word with an etymology, I still am deliberately shaping it so it'll turn out the way I want it to.
Nothing wrong with that at all! I haven't done a lot of proto-language work, but this sounds like a very reasonable plan.
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Re: Obscure etymologies

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elemtilas wrote:One thing I've done on several occasions is to flip-flop the etymology. Especially if it's a word I like or has the right feel to it. For example, in stead of saying that the Tirina word comes from Pr.Mong., try it the other way around: craft the etymology so that the cool Proto-Mongolian word is derived from whatever ancient ancestor of Tirina was current in that time frame! This way, you get the Tirina word you like, and the modern Mongolian word and also more or less the etymology you like. The only thing you've tinkered with is the age of the word and the direction of borrowing.
Ooh! That's a clever idea. I might have to try that in the future, I like it!
I generally forget to say, so if it's relevant and I don't mention it--I'm from Southern Michigan and speak Inland North American English. Yes, I have the Northern Cities Vowel Shift; no, I don't have the cot-caught merger; and it is called pop.

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Re: Obscure etymologies

Post by David Rabinowitz »

@elemtilas: that was 92.6% tongue-in-cheek :) (the remaining 7.4% is my own insecurities being projected out)
alynnidalar wrote:You mentioned you're mostly doing PIElangs, so I suppose this would come up less for you, but still: you will have to invent some words out of thin air. Perhaps mentally accepting this (and consciously trying to get rid of the feeling that it's "wrong") will help you be more comfortable with it?
I offer no resistance to creating words ex nihilo when I'm doing an a priori language (... as that would be moronic), but in an a posteriori conlang set in our world and timeline, I really don't see much of a have to. I don't expect the diachrony police to come storming through my door telling me to "put away that implausible lemma!", but... there are simply so many interesting sources to draw from! In eastern/central Europe, aside from the obvious Mediaeval Latin and Slavic sources, I can take pretty interesting words from Romani, Hebrew (usually via Yiddish, but still), Hungarian, Ottoman Turkish, etc. It's a veritable buffet! It would feel wrong... :p
alynnidalar wrote:I do confess that I usually craft the proto-Tirina forms so that, when subjected to sound changes, they yield something pleasing in Modern Tirina... so from that perspective, even when I create a word with an etymology, I still am deliberately shaping it so it'll turn out the way I want it to.
I do this to an extent, but mostly by choosing when to borrow words, and where. For example, I might see an interesting word I want to incorporate, but borrowing it too early might make it lose some of its flair, or I could introduce it into the standard dialect through a peripheral dialect from a different region, with different sound changes. (I also do this to account for irregular spellings.)
elemtilas wrote:One thing I've done on several occasions is to flip-flop the etymology. Especially if it's a word I like or has the right feel to it. For example, in stead of saying that the Tirina word comes from Pr.Mong., try it the other way around: craft the etymology so that the cool Proto-Mongolian word is derived from whatever ancient ancestor of Tirina was current in that time frame! This way, you get the Tirina word you like, and the modern Mongolian word and also more or less the etymology you like. The only thing you've tinkered with is the age of the word and the direction of borrowing.
Shrewd! I once tried an a priori language isolate in our world, and I would have loved to have thought of this back then..!

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Re: Obscure etymologies

Post by gsandi »

Going over some recent threads, this one caught my interest.

When I was developing the vocabulary of Tundrian, I was aware of the fact that it is not realistic to derive all words in a conlang from its putative ancestor – in this case, Vulgar Latin. I of course did borrow some words from Celtic and Germanic, just as did other Romance languages exposed to such influences. Hence the hardly original guerra ‘war’ (Germanic) and braca ‘a type of pants’ (Celtic). But there are surely other words that have no obvious source, or are from other languages spoken in Tundria (which I have not described yet). Having no other constraints, clearly I could invent anything I liked, as long as they fit Tundrian phonology. So I invented javuta [ʒa’vyta] ‘girl’, just because I liked the sound of it. And zaveit [za’vit] ‘shark’, just to increase the number of words beginning with z-. Then there is sûl /’sul/ ‘a shrew’, just so that I can have a minimal spelling contrast with soul (also /’sul/) ‘sun; alone’.

One word that is derived (if in an irregular way) from Latin is xonata /ʃu’nata/ ‘a nap’. This caught the eye of a composer in England called David Hamill, who had used this word as a title of a song he had composed. He must have found it on my site using Alta Vista – yes, this was that long a time ago. Anyway, he asked my permission to use the word, which I gave readily. But I did ask a favour in return – I said that I needed a national anthem for my imaginary country, and had absolutely no musical training in order to compose one. I said I wanted it in “typical bombastic 19th century style”. He was gracious enough to compose such an anthem, and he adapted it to the organ. You can link to the result here: http://www.tundria.com/TundriaFolder/tundriamap.shtml. I have not yet written the lyrics…

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Re: Obscure etymologies

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elemtilas wrote:One thing I've done on several occasions is to flip-flop the etymology. Especially if it's a word I like or has the right feel to it. For example, in stead of saying that the Tirina word comes from Pr.Mong., try it the other way around: craft the etymology so that the cool Proto-Mongolian word is derived from whatever ancient ancestor of Tirina was current in that time frame! This way, you get the Tirina word you like, and the modern Mongolian word and also more or less the etymology you like. The only thing you've tinkered with is the age of the word and the direction of borrowing.
I did something like that with a current project. In real life, the etymology of the Canary Islands comes from Latin Isla Canariae, "Islands of the Dogs." In my setting, the Canaries are a Carthaginian colony, and Canarian Punic has a regular sound change of n/r/_#. So in my setting, the etymology comes from Latin Isla Canarii, "Islands of the Canaanites/Carthaginians," from Canarian Punic ʾī Kanaʿrīm (the r got analogized in this particular word, where Canarian Punic contrasts Kanaʿrīm, "people of the Canaries," with Kanaʿnīm, "people of Carthage," though the contrast is neutralized in the singular).
"But if of ships I now should sing, what ship would come to me,
What ship would bear me ever back across so wide a Sea?”

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Re: Obscure etymologies

Post by elemtilas »

gsandi wrote:One word that is derived (if in an irregular way) from Latin is xonata /ʃu’nata/ ‘a nap’. This caught the eye of a composer in England called David Hamill, who had used this word as a title of a song he had composed. He must have found it on my site using Alta Vista – yes, this was that long a time ago. Anyway, he asked my permission to use the word, which I gave readily. But I did ask a favour in return – I said that I needed a national anthem for my imaginary country, and had absolutely no musical training in order to compose one. I said I wanted it in “typical bombastic 19th century style”. He was gracious enough to compose such an anthem, and he adapted it to the organ. You can link to the result here: http://www.tundria.com/TundriaFolder/tundriamap.shtml. I have not yet written the lyrics…
Brilliant! Nice bit of bombast that!

And the Xonata piece is pretty cool, too. Apparently turned out to be a jingle for a website.

Heh. I wonder: were the folks that developed the game Xonata as gracious with your word?

Awesome interaction, though!
Zaarin wrote:I did something like that with a current project. In real life, the etymology of the Canary Islands comes from Latin Isla Canariae, "Islands of the Dogs." In my setting, the Canaries are a Carthaginian colony, and Canarian Punic has a regular sound change of n/r/_#. So in my setting, the etymology comes from Latin Isla Canarii, "Islands of the Canaanites/Carthaginians," from Canarian Punic ʾī Kanaʿrīm (the r got analogized in this particular word, where Canarian Punic contrasts Kanaʿrīm, "people of the Canaries," with Kanaʿnīm, "people of Carthage," though the contrast is neutralized in the singular).
Cool! Looks entirely plausible to me.
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Re: Obscure etymologies

Post by HerljosScheindorf »

Words I found for Xeroßu were picked from pieces of the language heard in dreams and words that popped in my mind with some hints on the signification.
Other words are explicitly constructed by agglutination of root words or weaving (semi deterministic mixing of a few parent words phonemes ).

That's not a problem to me to expose or not some [pseudo] etymology of my lexicon.

I try to develop this language with the idea of an mostly unknown language discovered by large pieces, giving a clear image of the culture and philosophical concepts of the civilisation speaking it , but global knowledge is sparse and esoteric.


I don't have the feeling to know the etymology of each words I add to the language because of that I'm the sole creator of everything.
Instead, when I write something about a possible relation between words, it's why I suddently thought about this connection in the same way I would think of some possible connection about real natural ancient words after evaluated something about the given civilisation culture or history.

In example,
I have the word Shūlxi , designing an animal similar to hyena.
this came from nowhere, popped in mind and I found it interesting , so I add it to my registry.
It's an odd word for an animal, since almost all words describing animals that I retained so far are containing the root : aruk
tziaktaruk , tziāyixi (ā , .a.a. , is the only remain of a probable weaving of a word begining with ya, aruk and hixi, tzi latter agglutined radical) , coytlaruk , busǩwaruk , bwābaruk ...

Later, when working on my alphabet, I found that the world would probably contain the letters Sholhuatl and Hixi
And these two letters could be reduced to the idea of "hole/well receiving content"
And I clearly imagined a this point the "probable etymology" of the word, since this is perfectly sound with the mythological cosmogony and other aspects.

And it's pretty latter that I clearly identified the meaning for the root "aruk" when coming to include it in animals name.
rik is stone , ruk could be a declined form of rik , the form associated with idea of triumphal apparition (ascending in light, darkness behind) , and aruk could be interpreted as "stone becoming absolutely not stone".
Scheindorf Herljos of the Ereissu-Nifh Keshtri from Nǩakarak

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