Posted by Gareth Wilson on 18:33 9/5/02
In reply to: (none)
I just read your comments on the elcari language. It sounds fascinating, how far have you got with it? I've been playing around with your morphemes and I've guessed that _nebd_ means "miner" and _maku_ means "theft", although I'm open to correction.
Last I checked, the grammatical sketch had grown to about 17 pages. It's decidedly weird, which was my intention for a non-human language. There's still some important parts missing, though.
Your words are correct, though I'd adjust the glosses. Ebd
is an excavation of any kind; a mine would be a substyle. And mak
is specifically stealing property; it could also be translated 'invade'.
Stealing moveable objects is qilten.
Here's another nice word for you: gnqêtw 'father'. The initial g- is a masculine prefix (feminine is ch-); the final -w is an honorific, and the verb qêt is 'beget'.
If anyone's wondering what Gareth is referring to, by the way, it's to this rant.