Sentence 4.4

Ei dashayon kú bolon châ, ei kodnen dashayon kú bol châ

What's the difference between bolon and bol you ask? Well let me tell you.

A bolon of tea has a handle, a bol of tea has no handle. That's what the above sentence says. Of course you have to remember that the structure of this sentence is topic-marker possessed at possessor. This was what I was trying to cover with yesterday's entry.

So this is the difference between bolon and bol. A bolon is a cup with a handle. Thing-nouns are regarded as big and physical. A bol is a drinking bowl that can be held in one hand. In contrast to the thing-noun the masculine noun is considered smaller and finer (yeah, right!) So the two words imply a difference in size. This contrast was taken from Swahili where small things are KI-class and large things are MA-class. Ghostian has adopted this onto its gendered nouns. Whether it has done this consistently will be found out from future entries. We'll find out.

As an aside I was interested to watch an episode of the entertaining and informing comedy quiz show QI hosted by Stephen Fry where he explained that because the Chinese discovered china pottery they never developed glass and associated technologies, like lens-making, until the modern age when it was introduced by the colonial powers. If I'm using these Chinese-to-English dialogues to establish the culture of the ghostians it will be interesting to see if the same holds true to them as well.

Yesterday I saw a school leaver's hoodie which had on the back what looked like the lion of St Mark carrying a long banner coloured red, yellow, red. It inspired me to think that the ghostian flag could be made into a similar banner. The ghostian flag is a horizontal tricoleur of yellow-blue-yellow based on the original dust covers of the Teach Yourself Language Books produced by the English Universities Press.

As for the heraldic animal that bears the banner, I think it might be a hadrosaur. When I walk through the gardens and see the ducks I think that a grazing duck-billed quadruped would look rather neat. It goes without saying that The New Dinosaurs by Dougal Dixon is one of my favourite books. So there you have the ghostians and their crazy duck-billed heraldry!