Pronouns?

Question Board

dirtmonkeyal
September 20, 2014

I understand that the Dragon language is based off of English which has a reflexive pronoun for every POV (though Dovahzul is lacking the POV pronoun for "one/one/one's/oneself") But Dovahzul had one canon reflexive for itself, nimaar, already. Why make the rest? Nimaar could easily cover all other POVs. Is it just because English has separate words for them too?

And then there's rok -> mok and rek -> mek. I can see that in the canon possessive forms, they dropped the 'r' entirely, but why do the non-canon objective forms add the "m"? And for that matter why do the non-canon objective pronouns (zu'u -> zey and mu -> mii included) not follow the pattern of the canon objective forms?

Wouldn't this make more sense?

zu'u -> zi/zii

rok -> rik/riik (Keep the -k due to ok and ek.)

rek -> reyk? (This is the odd one out, honestly, but it could even be rek -> rek since you is hi -> hi.)

mu -> miin (the -n being for plural from nust -> niin)

And then there's the possessives for it and they. Where did the -l and -st come from? Not from the canon words. Couldn't 'nin' (from canon 'hin') work for its, and nun (from canon 'un') for their?

I'm sorry, it's just that none of the non-canon pronouns make much sense.

Category: Translation

0

paarthurnax
Administrator
September 20, 2014

Nimaar stems directly from nii, so it can only mean "itself." It wouldn't be equivalent to, say, the Icelandic reflexive sig. Likewise see the canon word geinmaar "oneself." All of the other reflexive pronouns are based on the pattern set by these two.

The issue with most of the alternatives you're presenting is that they're already canon words:

Zii is the word for "spirit"
Riik is the word for "gale"
Miin is the word for "eye"
Nin is the word for "sting"

The existing non-canon pronouns are designed to both fit the existing pronouns and not conflict with canon words.

The -st in niist is from canon. The nominative form is the canon word nust "they." Thus nust / niin / niist.

While some pronouns are do follow a recognizable pattern (like mek and mok), they also differ in a way that a natural language might. Consider "they / their," "you / your," and "we / our." Those match up pretty well. But then "he" becomes "his," not "her," and "she" becomes "her," not "sher."

The most elegant solution to the non-canon pronoun problem would be to delete them entirely and use canon pronouns to fill in the gaps. This is something I have proposed before. What are your thoughts on that?

Thuum.org

Thuum.org

Question Board

Pronouns?

0

Language

Community

Social