----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 11:24
AM
Subject: RE: [phoNet] Nenetsy
Could the Slavs on this group give me a quick and dirty way to form the
English adjective for the Nenets language? Is 'Nenetsy' the Russian
adjective for this Uralic language?
I'm looking for 'Nenetsic', a la Germanic Slavic Italic Hellenic
etc-ic.
The Russian adjective looks
like Nenetsky, from Nentsy 'the Nenets people'. Why not Nenetsian?
:)
Or just Nenets, best of
all. In English, there's a sensible tradition of using adj. = n. in
troublesome cases. Basque, Yukaghir, Zulu, etc. serve so well in both
functions that who would need "Basquian" or "Zuluic"?. I've never seen
anything else than "the Nenets people/language" in scientific
usage. The Polish adjectve is nieniecki (from
Nieńcy, the people); the forms are closely parallel to the
Russian ones. Anyway, what does it matter which form is preferred by Slavs?
Here's a useful link.