Sabbath day at the blue synagogue

The stem for the word for blue is blo, from a Scandanavian language I believe. It looks too obvious to me. I had been toying with the idea that the stem should be bol. Not a foolish idea as one rule I use is that words that end in -o in parent languages become the neuter-gender words ending in -on in Shente. Blue in Shente would be bol, bola, bolon in masculine, feminine and neuter forms.

I recognised a couple of culture words for the Shente. They have a building in their communities called a shagoga, it's a place for the teaching and practice of ritual doctrines. It comes from Greek word synagoge, probably from Teach Yourself New Testament Greek.

From the same source is evidence that they observe a sabbath day as they have the word sambaton. So they appear to keep some form of ritual law-code.

Eclectic Language Made Simple

I have finished making notes on Italian and Spanish Made Simple. New ideas arise...

The pronoun system becomes more complex. I had wondered what had happened to the second person plural was after the honorific kembí entered the language. The example of Spanish suggests that it survives as the plural form of the familiar pronoun ako.

I have also learned some conculture about the People. Their mid-day meal is merenda in the early afternoon. I haven't discovered whether they also practice a mid-day nap. Perhaps they are going to turn out to be a Mediterranean climate culture.

I need to do some more writing on grammar of this language. Where to start?

An Occasional Word: Duona Blaneta

Duona Blaneta, New Year. New Year Celebrations.

Dachant Duonan Blanetan, To celebrate New Year.

I have been working my way through a dictionary of Bislama looking for words that expand the lexicon and the use of words in Bâha. I found this word and decided it worked perfectly. In Bislama it is Boname, an obvious borrowing from French administrators in Vanuatu, who would have called it Bonne Annee.

It works equally as well for the Shente, who call it Duona Blaneta, Good Year. In their calendar they mark the beginning of the month at the new moon. The first new moon after the winter solstice is observed as the beginning of the new year. The Shente count off five days then light fires and celebrate that at the cold of the year they are calling back the sun and the days are getting longer.

If their seasons are in tune with mine then that is what they are doing around this time. Dachú Duonan Blanetan!, Celebrate the New Year!

Eating out

I was reading Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel again. I got as far as his chapter on the beginnings of agriculture. It interested me that I had words for one of the first baskets of agriculture: padí, which is rice; and wimbí, which is millet. I have no idea how millet is used in food production so that is something that I will have to investigate.

I also had words for using for one of the secondary food cultures: gandon, which is wheat; and mina, which is oatmeal.

This would suggest that crop farming was introduced to the eclectic language speakers from a Chinese style agriculture which was later supplimented by developing European crops. What a curious fusion.

I haven't listed enough animal words to see if their animal culture is as equally diverse.

Interestingly enough the crop words listed above are taken from Indonesian, Swahili and Gaelic.