Jì-

Méníshè

Etymology

From Proto-Méníshè *dih.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /dʒi˩-/, /dʒ-/

Prefix

jì- (fire class, may surface as j- before vowels)

1. Co-occurs most frequently with fire class nouns.

Derived Terms

Méníshè terms prefixed with jì-

Pronoun

jì- (third person dependent, fire class, may surface as j- before vowels)

1. she/her, he/him, it, they/them; third person dependent fire class pronoun.

Creation and Usage Notes

We screwed this prefix up something fierce. Originally, there was perfect symmetry between this prefix and the water class prefix. It would be the coronal (i.e. dì-) before a consonant, and the palatal otherwise—just like it is with the water class. Unfortunately, we kind of forgot about that, and just made it jì- everywhere. Then we screwed it up even worse, because it was supposed to be the low tone vowel before consonants, and a toneless vowel before other vowels. Instead, we made the vowel-initial prefix j-. That's certainly something a language would do, but it wasn't what we intended. In our defense, we were working with an extraordinarily abbreviated timeline. Anyway, dozens of fire class words somehow worked their way into the scripts, meaning that there's no way we could rescue our original conception. We had to go with what we did. And suffer. -David J. Peterson 01:15, 17 March 2020 (PDT)