Some Diomedeans call their planet "Oceanest." We have mentioned this name twice before. See here. (Scroll down.)
Does "Oceanest" mean "Most Oceanic" or "Ocean-Nest"? I suppose not the latter. If Poul Anderson had intended such a meaning, then he would have expressed it more clearly.
The sound that the Diomedean utters is "'...Ikt'hanis...'" (p. 160) Unlike some other planetary names, it does not mean "earth" but instead refers to the water covering the earth.
We want to know much more about Anderson's extraterrestrial languages and apparently some Trekkies have expanded on Vulcan and Klingon but Tolkien was unique. No one can do everything and Tolkien's project of creating languages, then imagining people who spoke them, then writing stories about those people was unprecedented and unparalleled.
Kaor, Paul!
ReplyDeleteI also thought of Nyanza, seen in "The Game of Glory," a planet almost wholly ocean covered.
Absolutely, what you said about Tolkien and his truly unique work. There are hard core fans zealously studying Sindarin and expanding it.
Happy New Year! Sean
IIRC Anderson includes a comment about "nouns being compared in the language" so oceanest rather than ocean-nest would be the intended translation.
ReplyDeleteAnderson does say that nouns were compared and that does mean what you say but it was such a throwaway remark that I missed it. I would have said "nouns were inflected like adjectives" or something a bit more explicit like that.
ReplyDelete