Zompist Bboard Again

In fiction, I often name things after plants — why not name languages after associated botanical motifs?

English — Oakish (after both the "Royal oak" and "Virginia oak"), variant sometimes Maple, Maplese
French — Lilian or Lysois (after the "fleur de lys")
Irish — Seamróg, or Shamrogue (form the shamrock, though I begin to feel that's a bit too on the nose)
Japanese — 菊語 Kikugo, or Kikuese, Chrysanthemum (from the chrysanthemum on the Imperial Seal)
Middle Chinese — 牡丹話 Mǔdānhuà, Mudanese, Peonese (from the peony frequent in Chinese art)
Middle English through Early Modern English — Rosish (from the Lancaster, York, and Tudor roses)
Sanskrit — Kamala or Padma, or Kamalese, Padmese (from the lotus, a common motif in Indian art)
Scots — Thrissels, Thistlish (from the thistle, naturally)

Coptic would presumably have something to do with reeds or bulrushes, but I don't know what the appropriate native word would be. I'm sure there could be others, but I'm at a bit of a loss for more off the top of my head.

Why are Japanese and Middle Chinese called Chrysanthemum and Peonese, yet Irish and Sanskrit aren't called Shamrock and Lotus? What would Malayalam be, Kurumolagu (Kurumolaguese?)? Blackpepper?

flicky wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 8:20 amThis comment made me think - how about you name each language after a word where that language famously uses a completely different word from most other languages? My first thought for English was "pineapple".

Idk, pineapple sounds pretty close to piña to me.

Ryusenshi wrote: ↑Sun Apr 04, 2021 2:35 amHow about using the word for ""?

What if there's more than one word for it? I guess Malayalam would now be called "Poombaata" unless we choose to call it "Chithrasalabham" instead.

Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Sun Apr 04, 2021 3:15 amIrish — Seamróg, or Shamrogue (form the shamrock, though I begin to feel that's a bit too on the nose)

Doesn't seem any more on the nose than the other choices, honestly. The endonym parallel to 菊語 or 牡丹話 would be "Seamróigis".

If you want an alternative, the Irish national tree is the oak, which you've already claimed for England. Another tree associated with Ireland is the strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo), a Mediterranean species which grows in the west of Ireland and was imported from there into English gardens in the early modern era. The Irish name is caithne which would yield Caithnis /'ˈkahinˊisˊ/.

Of course, the same tree is considered the national tree of Italy, where it is known as the albatro or--more poetically--the arbuto. "Albatrese" seems like too good-sounding a possibility to pass up.

Catalonia doesn't really make prominent use of any floral associations. Historically, though, there's an association with weaver's broom (Spartium junceum), known in Catalan as ginesta. That would yield ginestí (parallel to barceloní and mallorquí) and I guess Ginestan in English? ("Genistan" is we want to go back to the Latin.)

Germany also doesn't make use of floral symbols much except the oak (damn common Indo-European mythology!). The Prussians promoted the cornflower (Centaurea cyanus), which seems to have caught on more with emigrant communities than with Germans in Germany. "Centaurean" is a badass name for a language in any case. (The German would be "Kornblümisch".) It was also used by the Austrians before they went in big for the edelweiss.

The Korean equivalent of the chrysanthemum is the plum blossom, but the national flower is considered to be the rose of Sharon (무궁화). The Korean name is literally "unending flower". I suppose an anglicised form would be "Sharonic" or "Mugungese".

And if we really want to be on the nose, Welsh is obviously Leekish (in Welsh, Cenhineg)--or "Cenninic" is we want a term that parallels "Cymric". And Dutch would be "Tulipan" or "Tulipish" (Tulps).

I think the Dutch might have to fight the Turks for Tulipese, but those all feel nice. I ought to have known the Oak would show up rather a lot. For some variety of German, Linden also comes to mind (or Lindisch), because justice was, in ancient times, sometimes meted out Unter den Linden, I think was the phrase. The North Germanic languages could collectively also be Yggdrasilish, and the Indo-Aryan languages Haomese (from the plant appearing in... I think it was the Avesta?). I ought to have specified that mythological plants shouldn't be off the table. That would also give us a Fernflower group for the Baltic languages (I'm not sure what I would call them individually, however).

Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 6:19 pm For some variety of German, Linden also comes to mind (or Lindisch), because justice was, in ancient times, sometimes meted out Unter den Linden, I think was the phrase.

Unter der linden brings something entirely different to mind...

sasasha wrote: ↑Fri May 22, 2020 6:16 pm

Linguoboy wrote: ↑Fri May 22, 2020 3:01 pm

sasasha wrote: ↑Fri May 22, 2020 12:39 pmI love this. Poor old The.

We could at least call it "Thethe" /ˈðiːðə/.

True!

Edited so that I at least have more than one word in my response:

I actually like your Romance examples without the -te a lot:

Lela Romance (French)
Lola Romance (Occitan)
Oa Romance (Galaico-Portuguese)
Ella Romance (Castilian/Catalan/Valencian)
Essa Romance (Mallorcan)
Susa Romance (Sardinian)
Illa Romance (Italian)
Ula Romance (Romanian)

It's quite graceful, really.

The Castillian/Catalan/Valencian one is confusing because in those, <ll> is pronounced /λ~j/. Perhaps there needs to be a hyphen. And I think the Catalonians and Valencians wouldn't be to happy being lumped in with the Castilians Perhaps Castilian has hyphen El-la and Catalan/Valencian gets interpunct El·la.

Ryusenshi wrote: ↑Sun Apr 04, 2021 2:35 am How about using the word for ""?

English→butterfly
French→papillon
Italian→farfalla
Spanish→mariposa
Portuguese→borboleta
German→Schmetterling
Dutch→vlinder
Russian→бабочка
Polish→motyl
Greek→πεταλούδα
Hungarian→pillangó

Icelandic→fiðrildi
Danish/Norwegian Bokmål→sommerfugl
Norwegian Nynorsk→sommarfugl
Swedish→fjäril
Faroese→summarfuglur, firvaldur
Finnish→perhonen

Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 6:19 pmFor some variety of German, Linden also comes to mind (or Lindisch), because justice was, in ancient times, sometimes meted out Unter den Linden, I think was the phrase.

I also strongly associate lindens with German because they're one of the most beloved urban trees there (somewhat comparable to what elms were in this country). If you wanted to go with mythological world trees, the Saxon equivalent was the Irminsûl, which was destroyed by Charlemagne. Irmin is the name of a god, so that opens up another possibility, that of using the names of ancient deities of writing (or eloquence or oaths or whatever seems close enough). That would give us:

Fuxi > Fuxian (伏羲文)
Hermes > Hermetic (ερμητική)
Mercurius > Mercurian (Mercuriānus)
Odin > Odinish (Odinsk)
Ogma > Ogmish (Oghmais)
Saraswati > Saraswatian (सरस्वती)
etc.

This works best for ancient languages, obviously. For modern European languages, there's a tradition of naming them for "national" authors, e.g.:

The language of Molière
The language of Vondel
The language of Goethe
The language of Dante
etc.

In most cases, there's an existing adjective for "pertaining to" or "in the style of" (e.g. dantesco "Dantesque"). Perhaps in the interests of clarity, it would be best to create new derivations to specify to the languages, e.g."

Molièrais
Vondels
Goethisch
Danteano
etc.

Sometimes these names incorporate the names of national epics (e.g. "the language of Kalevala"). So there's another option:

Rolandais
Niebelungisch
Cideño
Mabinogeg
Táinis
etc.

Vijay wrote: ↑Sun Apr 04, 2021 9:32 pm

flicky wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 8:20 amThis comment made me think - how about you name each language after a word where that language famously uses a completely different word from most other languages? My first thought for English was "pineapple".

Idk, pineapple sounds pretty close to piña to me.

Yeah true. It's just a bit of a meme how many places have variations on "ananas" and English and a few others are the weird outliers.

Polish (polski) could be named Vistulan (wiślański) if history went differently

Travis B. wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 9:52 pm

Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 6:19 pm For some variety of German, Linden also comes to mind (or Lindisch), because justice was, in ancient times, sometimes meted out Unter den Linden, I think was the phrase.

Unter der linden brings something entirely different to mind...

I had to look that up. I'd only ever heard of Unter den Linden.