[jbovlaste] Re: Alice in Wonderland 14

[John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>]

On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 11:09 AM, Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu> wrote:
> On Friday 22 October 2010 09:54:47 * Hieran Makhwali wrote:
>> {ostreda} would be one fu'ivla coined from the taxon, Ostreidae.
>
> Sounds good to me. A lot of words for oyster sound like that: Slovene ostriga,
> Spanish ostra, Modern Greek streidi (the "o" dropped off), Hungarian
> osztriga, etc. "g" is more common than "d" as the last consonant, though.

It would have to be made clear, though, whether these are only family
Ostreidae (what I called "true oysters" in my last posting) or include
pearl oysters, etc.

> I've thought of "klamcele" for clam, but it sounds malgli. "vongola" is a
> valid fu'ivla, but occurs only in Italian. Any other suggestions?

Having looked at clams now as well as oysters, I think the whole topic
is hopeless.  "Clam" in U.S. English can mean (a) any bivalve mollusk
(b) any burrowing or swimming bivalve (c) any burrowing bivalve (d)
only certain edible species.  In U.K. English it is not used
generically, but only refers to certain edible species, different ones
from in the U.S.   "Vongola" refers specifically to _Venerupis
decussata_, but I suspect that if you order _linguini con vongole_ in
an Italian restaurant in the northeastern U.S. you will get _Mya
arenaria_ instead.

I suggest the following general plan:

1) "cakcurni" for the bivalve mollusks.

2) language-based type 4 fu'ivla for language-specific concepts.

3) Linnaean fu'ivla for specific species, genera, orders, and
families.  However, these are shaky too, because as Wikipedia says, no
consensus exists on the taxonomy of bivalves above the species level.

As a friend of mine says, "Call them all 'darling'.  That way you
don't make a mistake in the morning."