From: David_Lebling@avid.com
Subject: (whorl) Trivigaunti Terms
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 97 09:49:46 


[Posted from WHORL, the mailing list for Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun]

Some elucidation on the Trivigaunti language, courtesy of my cousin Bob,
who works for Aramco in Saudi Arabia:

"'ishsh" (Get going?) -- not familiar. "khush" means "go in," or
"enter"; we use "yalla" for "get going"

"betifham 'arabi" -- do you understand Arabic?

"karbaj" -- kurbaj in classical Arabic means a whip.

"marhaba" -- hello

"boraz" -- "biraz" in classical can mean "excrement" or "contest" or
"duel" (this strange juxtaposition because the root "b-r-z" has the
basic meaning of "to come out" or "appear" and thus takes on the meaning
of "stand out", "surpass", or "excel". I don't know about "boraz".

Names:

"Abanja" -- dunno
"Hadale" -- dunno

"Hossaan" (cognate to Hussein?) -- can be; could also mean horse, if
it's a velar "s".

"Lijam" -- bridle or rein
"Matar" -- rain
"Nizam" -- system

"Rimah" -- sometimes a woman's name; "reem" means gazelle; "reemah" may
mean an individual female gazelle

"Saba"  -- sabah (with heavy aitch) means morning; without aitch, could
mean "youth" (abstract noun) or even "east wind"

"Sigada" -- dunno
"Silah" -- dunno
"Sirka" -- dunno
"Siyuf" -- swords

He adds, "Many of the words I give dunnos for could be words I recognize
if they are slightly changed.  It seems clear the author used Arabic,
though."

A little more explanation of the preceding (from me).  There is no
"official" way to transliterate Arabic into our alphabet.  This problem
is complicated by the fact that Arabic has sounds that don't appear in
English (a whole repertoire of glottal stops and Ks and Q's).  Recall
the umpty-foo different ways of transliterating Moammar Qaddafi's name
when he was in the news a lot.  In addition Arabic has (by our
standards) a paucity of vowels, just three with long and short versions
of each.

     -vizcacha
     (david_lebling@avid.com)