Mk_C wrote: ↑Fri Sep 25, 2020 11:12 pm
It seems more like during an emergence of a new technological thingamajig that needs it's own name for specificity, referring to it's principle of function is one of the few convenient and obvious options for naming it, along with referring to it's place of origin or a key personality or straight up loan words. I can't recall an example of "non-Western" language where principles of function is not a frequent approach for naming thinges - for example, names for X-ray machines/shots, and, say, video tapes and nuclear devices refer to X-rays (albeit with the phenomenon being named with a reference to Wilhelm Roentgen), tape and nuclei in Hebrew, Japanese and Turkish as well, distinctly very non-Western languages. Similar examples in Russian are countless, but that one probably doesn't count.
Well, that's a difficult comparison in our case, since video tapes and nuclear devices and x-ray machines were not independently invented (as far as I'm aware) in Israel or Japan or Turkey; their words for these items are most likely based on those from English or German or what have you. English also has a lot of borrowed nomenclature, especially from French.
As technologis change faster and faster, even in English we're starting to move away from media- or technology-specific words and more often using more flexible terms like "files," "data," "titles," "recordings." and "mobile phones."
Mainly I think about naming from a science fiction writing standpoint: unless you're specifically showcasing a particular technology, I think it's best to try to name things to their function rather than the technology you think may be behind them, to try to avoid embarrassing anachronisms as much as possible. I still grind my teeth a little bit when I'm watching
Aliens and Gorman says of Ripley's report, "Anyway we have it on disk, so you'd better take a look at it." In trying to sound high-tech, they end up sounding low-tech. All they had to do was say "file" or something less specific, to avoid irritating obsessive viewers like me.
It also works to use a borrowed name after a creator or place (like "Alderson drive" or "Bergenholm generator"), but this requires additional explanation, so again it kind of needs to be an important point in the story. Realism aside, it's not good to load up the reader with any more jargon to remember than is strictly necessary. And using borrowed words from other alien languages is just confusing, even if it may be realistic.
Mk_C wrote: ↑Fri Sep 25, 2020 11:12 pm
Now this got me thinking - could there be some well-hidden clues among the possibly more "manually produced" and supposedly archaic pieces of Trade lexicon about the nature of Soia, like how their numeral system suggests that they were not ten-fingered? Hmmm...
My assumption is that most high-tech names in Loroi Trade have to be new additions, compound words or new twists on the meaning or the construction of more basic words. Soia-era Trade no doubt had its own high-tech terminology, but most of this would have been lost during the millennia in which the Loroi had reverted to primitive technology. The extant writing that helped Trade to survive with minimal change would have been mostly limited to public signage and inscriptions on devices. The technical manuals, alas, did not survive... that would have made things a lot easier in much more than language.
