Re: Genderless Lingo

On Sun, 19 Dec 1999 23:59:02 -0600 Patrick Dunn
<tb0pwd1@...> writes:
> You wouldn't.  IN Advena, every word is a verbal phrase, so "I'm
> human"
> would be "umn-qa", "You are human", "umn-xa," "he is human"
> "umn-sa".
> Incidently, I understand there *are* some Earth languages that do
> this --
> they have words for "to be a <ethnic group>."  Advena just carries
> it way too far.
.

Hebrew does this, sort of.  Not "to be a...", but "to become a...", and
i've only seen it used for religions, although it probably could be used
for other kinds of groupings as well.
The verbs use the reflexive (hitpa`eil) paradigm.

_lehityaheid_ (YHD) = to become a Jew
_lehitnatzeir_ (NTzR) = to become a Christian
_lehitasleim_ (2SLM) = to become a Muslim ({2} = /?/)

They also have forms in the intensive (pi`eil) paradigm, for instance:

_le'asleim_ = to convert someone to Islam

Those are the only ones i've ever seen, although i don't doubt that there
are also, for instance, something like BDH for "to become/make-someone a
Buddhist", KPR for "to become/make-someone an Atheist", etc.

So, i don't see what would prevent anyone from, for instance, using a
verb 2MRQ for "to become an American" or SYN for "to become Chinese".
*RQBGLM for "to become Rokbeigalmki", however, might be a little too long
to evade Hebrew's basicly 3-letter root system.  The longest root i've
ever seen was in a "History of Hebrew" book, the 5-letter-root borrowing
FLRTtTt, "lehitflartteitt" for "to flirt", if i remember correctly.


-Stephen (Steg)
 "Eze-guvdhab wa'hrikh-a tze, / "zhoutzii wa'esh," i eze-mwe."