“kozo’pehn” is literally “father brother”. It uses brother as an additive to make the word mean “brother of my father.” To a tensei speaker, inflection would be the key between “father’s brother” and just “father brother” as two separate words.
Gen mo means "be good". Tehk hears that one a lot.
Ruder still to switch languages in the middle of a conversation when not everyone understands it, Tekh. (I’m guessing his parents don’t speak english, or not well, yet, but if you want a private conversation you’ve still got the finish the other one first!)
The only instance where it’s ok to exclude someone in a conversation by speaking a language they don’t understand is if you’re translating. Side conversations in a language others don’t understand is kinda rude. Half my family speaks a language I don’t, so I’ve gotten crash courses in what is and isn’t rude.
Are you ever going to release a thesaurus on Sarnothi?
It would really liven up this world, like JRR Tolkien did with Middle-Earth.
Tolkien was a linguist. He designed multiple conlangs -first- and then built a world around them.
Very few genre authors have ever done this.
Yes, but even a little glossary — such as that in Watership Down for the Lapine language — can still liven things up a bit.
However, I like the “acquisition through context” part that we’re doing now. Trying to work out a few bits the way you’d do with normal languages, without having handy guide books. I’ve done that with Romani and Basque, using a multi-language Bible text (the Unbound Bible lets you put up to four languages side by side), with no educational resources, just trying to pick up on patterns and trying to make out vocabulary terms vs. grammatical pieces and such. It’s fun and a good workout for my brain.
So if a glossary comes, I hope it comes much, much later ^_^
It’s been said that LOTR can be read as sci-fi, with Linguistics being the science. I like that way of looking at it. 🙂
Selkie: “It’s also rudes to speak Tensei in fronts of people who don’t. Plus, it’s nots spyings if you’re not tryings to keep quiets.”
If you don’t want people listening, be discreet.
You’re literally talking right in front of us, out loud.
Wonder if sarnoth still practices slavery, or has until recently if that’s the first thing on Tekh’s mind.
Remember “The Old Farmer” Scar and how he met Selkie’s Mother?
I agree Mr Lurker. Dave your comic is wonderful and the narrative keeps people drawn in, thank you for adding some unique and colorful culture to this lonely world.
So Tensei is basically Swedish?
There’s a few languages which use compounded words significantly. Honestly, most English words either are compounds or descend from compounded words in its parent languages.
Whats interesting from my 3 seconds of internet research is that the English “Uncle” appears to be descended from specifically the Matriarchal “Mother’s Brother”, which was then generalized, as opposed to the ‘Father’s Brother’ being used here.
The other alternative would be using prefixes and suffixes to modify the base words in the style of Inuit languages and Russian. But then it would be more likely to be something like ‘pehnko’ or ‘kopehn’ with the ‘pe’ meaning ‘brother of’.
Bork bork bork. 🙂
Bork bork bork
Bork bork bork 😀
MMMMmmm, my favorites; chicken-boom-boom or Hot-T-Doggies!
Bjork, Byork, Bjork!
The Welsh possessive is similar, though the order is different. “Brawd Nhad” would be “brother father” and read “brother of my father”, though we’d just use “ewythr” (uncle) in this case.
“Father brother” would be “father of brother”… so, er, father.
(Lapses into embarrassed silence)
You speak Welsh?! Squeeee! [fangirling]
Ahhh… That makes sense. Mina slipped a bit there with the assumptions, but it seems like the school screwed up not giving her that bit of 411.
I love Selkie’s happy face when Todd claims her as his I’m the first panel.
Yeah, ditto that for me.
I met a boy adopted at six years of age, and the emotions he shared about being owned by his family, and owning a family of his own that he belonged to — that “being part of a unit”, holding and being held in a family, his words could not express because of language barriers. But the look on his face, is much like Selkie’s… Only bigger.
More than the “pinnacle of being” was to Not be in the orphanage, more like “wanting and being wanted” was the only hunger, the only desire that matted. Oh, sure, candy, food, a thing, but those pale and easily put down. And then he would peek around a corner, peer into a room and see his new Mom or Dad, and SMILE! I am not sure if it emptied something from my heart or just over-filled it. Anyway, it hurt to see that, and fiercely.
Is Tek having to stay with his uncle? If so, whatever led to that could be the source of his anger.
Based on how Tek said that, this brings up an interesting question: Does the concept of Adoption even exist for Saronthi? I know Selkie’s mother had war issues that led to her having to give up Selkie, but do Saronthi adopt other Saronthi?
I can’t imagine some form of adoption not existing. The odds that a child would never exist in their society who didn’t have living parents until adulthood just seems like a big stretch. Certainly it may be less common for non-relatives to take care of orphaned children but even that would seem likely to occur. I suppose alternatives could exist such as permanent orphanages or,worse, slavery for orphans, but I would be shocked if adoption of some kind didn’t exist in one form or another.
“Tehk, be good.”
“Sorry, Uncle.”
“— —, please?”
“(Yes), Uncle.”
Translated the words I could find, guessed the ones I couldn’t.
Fatherbrother (uncle), motherbrother (also uncle), mothermother (grandma), fathersister (aunt) and so on is exactly how we do it in danish as well 🙂
Tehk, you do know that slaves don’t get treated like people at all right?
With the caveat that slavery is always fundamentally wrong – some societies and cultures actually treated some of their slaves relatively well.
It is wrong. And I’d rather not get into that at all.
Then why raise the issue in the first place?
I didn’t? Literally didn’t? I just said something obvious and Mikael could’ve just not said anything. But uhh. Yeah it’s totes all my fault. -___-
You’re not seriously trying to pull the “don’t say something if I don’t ageee with it” card, are you? Mikael acknowledged slavery was wrong and provided a relevant addition.
Nowhere did David say it was all your fault either.
This is one of those comics that provides good opportunities for discourse among readers about social and cultural norms. To casually dismiss it because you don’t like a particular message is more than a little extreme.
The whole ‘Then why raise the issue in the first place?’ felt like he was. It didn’t feel like Mikael was agreeing at all. Still doesn’t.
And I really didn’t want to get into that conversation. I just wanted to end it at that. ‘Casually dismissing’ isn’t what I’m doing. I’d just rather not delve into this topic at all. Can you just please back off of me.
Let’s start out in the post by all agreeing that slavery is wrong, MmKay?
But historically, every major ancient culture seems to have practiced some form of it, expecially ally for war captives. To include Amerinds. There’s gotta be a reason for that. The reason that makes the most sense is that often the alternatives (like taking no live war captives, or mutilating them to prevent having to fight them again) are even worse. No “primitive” (defining primitive as pre gunpowder) society has the excess Capital to spend on long-term imprisonment. And modern laws of modern warfare didn’t exist – let alone mechanisms to enforce them.
So, yes, slavery sucks. But given that ancient societies weren’t all sunshine and unicorns f@rting delicious icecream, some variant of serfdom/slavery can look a lot more “civilized” than execution or (say) cutting off the thumbs of trained archers before sending them home.