🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1742@tdat.teradata.COM> swf@tools3teradata.com (Stan Friesen) writes:
>In article <1993Jan7.235358.14797@trl.oz.au>, jbm@hal.trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy) writes:
>|> As someone remarked earlier on, suggesting that it might be of
>|> Celtic origin, there is in fact in Irish a preposition "na"
>|> which translates the genitive plural. So  "x na y" is "x of the y's".
>|> Perhaps that is where Marion Zimmer Bradley drew her "n'ha" from,
>|> but it needs not be a conscious memory.
>
>I think it is though.  She developed the Darkover languages very carefully, as
>reasonable developments from the lnaguages spoken by the original colonists.
>[Check out the story about the foundation of Darkover, it shows what her
>basis was - I think it was a mixed Spanish and Celtic group that crashed
>on the planet].

Carefully?  Hah.  The aristocrats' language ("casta") is Romance in flavor,
and the commoners' language ("cahuenga", the name of a pass in the Hollywood
Hills!) is said to be Anglo-Gaelic; but it's clear from "Darkover Landfall"
(the beginning of the history of Darkover, but written rather late I think)
that the red-haired aristocrats are descended from a clique of romantic
Scots.  The word "bredu" is said to mean `betrothed' or `extramarital lover'
or (possibly) `homosexual lover' depending on the inflection, forsooth --
so is casta a tone language, and did it get that feature from Spanish,
Gaelic or English?  The ritual phrase "z'par servu" obviously means
something like "I am at your service," but where does that `z' come from?
And so on.  I seem to remember hearing MZB quoted as denying that she put
any serious thought into constructing the languages.  It looks as though she
just put some Romance words in to give it a touch of authentic flavor, but
otherwise made it all up as she went along -- which would be consistent with
the fact that she wrote the books in no particular order over a couple of
decades.

Well, I do run into members of her family now and then, I suppose I could
ask the next one I see about the history of casta.
(Makes sense to ask someone with red hair, right?)

Back to the matter at hand, though.  In at least one of the Darkover books,
it is mentioned that "n'ha" is short for "nekhya ha".  "Nic", of course, is
Gaelic for `daughter'.  But, again, where does "ha" come from?  Hebrew?
-- 
Anton Sherwood                                       dasher@well.sf.ca.us
+1 415 267 0685              1800 Market St #207, San Francisco 94102 USA