tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Sep 26 21:17:40 1997
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bums
- From: Nick Nicholas <[email protected]>
- Subject: bums
- Date: Sat, 27 Sep 1997 12:34:06 +1000
- Organization: Ling & App Ling, Uni of Melbourne
On Wed, 13 Aug 1997 13:54:24 -0700 (PDT) Guido
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Funny thing is, neither English nor French has an
> original word meaning gluteus maximus. It's always been locational (behind,
> bottom) or metaphorical (butt/bout = bump, back (e.g. of gun)).
What of 'arse'? That certainly goes all the way back to Old English, at least.
> 'o' has
> potential for lots of uses, but of course if we persist in the cliche of
> using it as anatomical, it might limit certain interpretations to unwitting
> crudity. Can a speaker really command an audience that can't possibly take
> seriously phraseology like "the ass of a sentence" or "the butt of my ship"?
Well, this is one of the things English-speakers find amusing about Tok Pisin
(New Guinea Pidgin), which uses 'as' (< arse) in a wide variety of
metaphorical meanings, including 'reason', 'origin', and 'base'; e.g. as
bilong tok = the cause or origin of a story or complaint. In fact, this kind
of metaphor is quite widespread in South-East Asia (a neck of the woods Okrand
has worked on); so it would not be outlandish to find that a Klingon word for
'back' or 'below' (including a now restricted word like 'o'), a word for
'posterior', and a word for 'basis' or 'foundation' might turn out to be the
same; and indeed, the directionality of spread of the meaning would not be a
given.
--
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Nick Nicholas. Linguistics, "Rode like foam on the river of pity
University of Melbourne Turned its tide to strength
http://www.lexicon.net.au/~opoudjis Healed the hole that ripped in living"
[email protected] - Suzanne Vega, Book Of Dreams
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