tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Aug 15 05:22:34 1994
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RE: salutations!!!!
>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>Date: Thu, 11 Aug 94 17:33:37 EDT
>According to Mark E. Shoulson:
>> ... I've been looking over Cherokee, and the word for
>> "my wife" is something like six or seven syllables, at least!
>>
>> ~mark
>>From what little I know about Cherokee, I'd suggest you get
>used to it. While the language is incredibly colorful and
>capable of expressing levels of specificity that are poetic and
>unmatched by any European language, efficiency of syllables is
>not one of their strong suits. Get ready for words with fifteen
>syllables...
I know. Just pointing out that it's not at all strange for a language to
have longer phrases for common things than one might think. Zipf's law
(that common things have shorter names) is no law but a tendency.
>The guy on the tape I have talks.... real.....slowwwwwwww.
>charghwI'
~mark