Translating names of pets
friend's cat (female kitten) Bandy 'little bandit':
Arpince from arpo + -ince 'thief, seizer (diminutive)'
There's a slight pun in the E back-translation as 'Little Seizer' is pronounced like 'Little Caesar', the mascot of a widespread pizza chain here.
As a Q pun, alternate derivation ar- + pince 'noble, royal, lofty little (one)' or, loosely, 'little princess' (fitting as cats are often perceived as behaving loftily as though they were nobility or royalty and also like to climb high)
different friend's cat (female adult, named as kitten) Little Miss, already a pun in E given its meaning 'little maiden' and its origin as a contraction of 'little mischievous (one)':
Tyalinquen from tyal- + -inqua + -wen 'playful maiden'
I might have compounded a bit fast and loose here for aesthetic elegance and relative brevity: I dropped the 'a' on the end of -inqua, recalled the underlying spelling -inkw-, combined the 'ww' to yield tyalinkwen, and normalized spelling back to qu. Full/formal forms are Tyalinquaven and very long Tyalinquavende. The short form -in of -inqua gives Tyalinwen. Using this form -in, an alternate derivation for Tyalinquen is tyal- + -in + -quen 'playful one'. (Properly, quen might only be applicable to persons that speak with rational words, but because of informality and personification it seems appropriate.) Since all of these are still a bit long in syllable count for quick informal usage, I often use a short form Tyalven '(female) playmate, (lit.) play-maiden' (fitting as she is very playful).
Tyalven as amilerya:
Tamas Ferencz Oct 10, 2017 (19:54)
- we now also have the verbal suffix -ite to express adjectives with a general relation to the verb, like karaite "busy, active = full of activity". So with roots like TYAL we can have the pair of adjectives tyalinqua and tyalaite, one coming from the noun, the other from the verb. Would there be (or can we assign) any difference in their meanings, or would both essentially mean "playful"?
- the other thing is, do we actually know whether suffixing a noun with -ince the final vowel is automatically dropped? The attested examples we have (atarince, cirince etc.) are not conclusive, and arpoince wouldn't be against Q phonology, would it?
Björn Fromén Oct 10, 2017 (23:48)
Tamas Ferencz Oct 11, 2017 (00:15)
I mean I am not saying you aren't right, I just want to understand the principles
Björn Fromén Oct 11, 2017 (23:19)
Had forgotten quainque (< *quai-enque?), thanks for reminding me. I believe it must be considered anomalous, however.
Final a and e seem to be regularly elided in compounding/suffixation, if hiatus would otherwise result: lo(a)ende, orn(e)ómi, luin(e)ince. Similarly, o is elided in Ots(o)elen, but in Noldó(a)ran it's prolonged and the initial a- is dropped instead. I doubt that we have enough examples to discern a principle here.
Tamas Ferencz Oct 12, 2017 (09:26)
Thanks!
Robert Reynolds Oct 14, 2017 (14:43)