[I hope yall'll forgive that all these replies are together.. I can only
respond through this clunky webmail interface and not Outlook Express
anymore.. stupid mail servers.]
From: "William Annis" <annis@...>
> >From: Muke Tever <alrivera@...>
> >
> >Rami can't have a word for "sky".
> >The sky is not a thing... it is not a direction, really... I don't think
it
> >can be a verb... It's just an abstract concept, an idea.
>
> The sky may not be a thing in a modern world view, but several
> ancient cultures certainly thought the sky was a thing. Why not take
> a historical perspective, and let the sky be a thing?
But it is a very strange thing--it cannot be heard or touched or smelled or
tasted, and its appearance is quite... inconstant? It is possible that the
day's blue sky might be seen as a thing by the Rami, but I am not sure that
any other state might be. Words for spaces.. Words for any spaces at all
might be difficult Rami concepts.
From: "Christophe Grandsire" <christophe.grandsire@...>
> Well, in this case having a conculture with your conlang helps a lot. Some
> cultures consider the sky to be a kind of lid or cover or roof above earth,
> and thus call it that way (or a derivative).
Which would be going with what I thought before, a nominal derivative of
"above", basically, meaning "cover" or "ceiling".
> Some just have a god of the sky and name the sky itself after the god.
Well, the Rami have been traditionally nontheistic.
> Some separate day sky and night sky (like supposedly the
Proto-Indo-Europeans
> did) and have different terms for both.
There were PIE words for different skies?
> Then why not having different terms for the sky, with one extended to mean
> "sky in general" but originally with a specific meaning, and the other ones
> still used with their specific meaning?
There probably cannot be a "sky in general" word. But perhaps "sky in
general" could be achieved by a dvandva compound between the day-sky and the
stars.
> Of course, if your conlang is supposed to be a philosophical language, none
> of those ideas work :)) .
It is "sort of" philosophical. Not entirely. I can bend it in places if I
have to but I'd prefer not to.
From: Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>
>>What *is* the sky, in concrete terms?
>
>The apparent dome above us. I'd argue it's a thing that just happens not to
>exist. How does Rami treat things like mirages, horizons, rainbows and other
>stuff that doesn't have any independent existence but nonetheless can be
>seen?
Well, mirages and rainbows can be seen clearly, though a horizon isn't (what
color is it?). But---
From: Herman Miller <hmiller@...>
> My first thought was "atmosphere". But then, that doesn't work on the moon.
> (Doesn't the moon have a sky?) Since it's a visual feature, maybe an
> artistic term like "background" would be a better metaphor. The sky, in
> that view, would be the ultimate background.
--it's possible that both "sky" and "horizon" could be covered by a word
meaning roughly "distance". Hmm.
*Muke!
--
http://www.frath.net/