Re: [LANGDEV] Mineral & chemical names

[B Philip Jonsson <bpj@netg.se>]

At 12:50 -0500 on 14.1.1998, John Cowan wrote:


> Jan Havlis wrote:
>
> >     Also such elements as iron, copper or gold will have its own name
> > depending on the nature of the Jarda society.
>
> If you can manage it, I urge to you to get Poul Anderson's wonderful
> essay "Uncleftish Beholding" ("Atomic Theory"), which is written
> in a version of English that has no French, Latin, or Greek borrowings.
> (It helps if you know another Germanic language).

Can you please give the name of the book?  I've always liked the writings
of PA.

This wordcraft is a fun game! Others that have played at it were JRR
Tolkien, William Morris (you would have expected _them_ to do it, wouldn't
you?) and the Elizabethan polymath Thomas Cheke.  The latter was in full
ernest on a crusade against what he perceived as unnecessary accretions on
th English language, even translating at least part of the New Testament
into his puristic English.  It is noteworthy that he was a professor of
Greek and wrote excellently in both French and Latin.

> The elements in particular are named as follows:  H waterstuff,
> He sunstuff, U ymirstuff, Pu helstuff, O sourstuff, N chokestuff,
> C coalstuff, Fe iron.  These and other unclefts are built from firstbits
> (with forwardladen bernstoneness), neitherbits (with no bernstoneness),
> and bernstonebits (with backwardladen bernstoneness).

Some of these elements are indeed familiar from German and Swedish: in
particular the suffix -stuff is a direct calque (sp?) on German.
Waterstuff, sourstuff and chokestuff are _vaete, syre, kvaeve_; while the
first two are obvious cognates of "wet" and "sour" the third is indeed from
the Swedish verb for "choke", _kvaeva_.  We also say _laddning_ for
"charge".  In Icelandic there are of course this kind of words in ordinary
use.  Electricity is thus _hrafmagn_ or _hraforka_, both literarily
"bernstonepower".  I urge every player of this game to acquire an
English-Icelandic dictonary!

A related URL (which I'm sure I've plugged for before, but I jus love it):

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~ctb/wordhord.html

This reminds me of a Sanskrit acquaintance of me -- he actually knows most
of the Asthaadhyaayii by heart, btw! -- who suggested using the Sanskrit
word _kaamaduh-_ "wish-fullfilling cow" to translate computer, and since
the literal meaning of the word is "desire-milk:giving" the metaphor is
really powerfull: "data" becomes _kaamadugdha_ from the participle of the
verb "to milk", "computing" _kaamadogdhii_ "milking of desire",
"mother-card" _kaamadugharba_ "womb of the kaamaduh", "CPU"
_kaamaduggh.rdaya_ "heart of the kaamaduh".  Since _dohadalaksana_ from the
same root means "embryo" it comes in handy for "bit" and so on.  Of course
the screen is a _kaamadugmukha_ (the cow's face), the mouse is its tail and
the pointer is the tip of the tail (which words I've forgotten.  BTW
anybody heard about the VVV? _Vishva-var.sa-vitaana_!

Ashvamitrah