That which we call a sprite...

[DaemianLucifer]

Arent most of the nouns in chinese just descriptions of the thing they refer to?

[BenchBreaker]

actually it's call chinese

I don't know much about chinese, but aren't there different dialects, and people can't understand one if they only know the other/s?

Aren't there also rules about making words and stuff. I can get how it can be complicated to make up/borrow new names. But I still prefer things having their own name, not just being asociated with something else.

And please don't call it English mentality as most off our languages are based on latin and germanic, not english.

apologize about that english mentality commet, i didn't know what else to describe it as at the time, it's probably an european thing, i only called it an english mentality coz we where talking about english, and i knew you were not english

[soupnazii]

actually, correct me if im wrong but im pretty sure that in chinese theres like a different symbol for each word, and some symbols for sounds, instead of the traditional letters. thats why they havelike thousands of letters and why its so dificult to learn the language.

I may be getting confused with japanese (if that offended anyone in any way, i apologize)

[ThunderTitan]

Actualy all word are a description of something. But they aren't necesarly describing an animal based on another animal. There's an animal that's pretty much called Laugh in my language, because of the sound he makes.

And the english language does have names like Mountain Lion and others, but the proper name is Puma, and that's why I asked about you being sure they don't have other less descriptive names.

[BenchBreaker]

well it's not easy to explain, but a good starting point would be you could think of it as either having no "alphabet" or a 10,000+ letter alphabet, each one called a character. so you can't just use a random combination of letters to make a new word like in latin languages, that's probabily why nouns/things are mostly characters joined together, each single character has a rough meaning, but its meaning vary greatly when it's joined to a different character, or used in different context. e.g. that machine part of flying machine/plane could mean organic (as in organic chemistry) when joined with another character.

about the diabletc thing, they are simply extreme accents, but the written language looks and means the same, just different pronunciation

[ThunderTitan]

about the diabletc thing, they are simply extreme accents, but the written language looks and means the same, just different pronunciation

Never got that one. We have some pretty weird accents here too, but except for some words that are only used in certain regions I can understand just fine, and even for those word I can usualy make out the meaning.

[Gaidal Cain]

Can we have a clensing of this topic?A split called "Whats in a name" would do just fine.

Good idea. Though I choose another part of the quote...

[Blaspheme]

no wonder you know that the dryads are tree-spirits

Oh, for crying out loud. It's bloody greek mythology. I know because I actualy read something, and not just invented it and stole a name I saw in WC3.

Just a simple question: What other name do the dryads have in greek mythology?

[ThunderTitan]

They don't. They're all Nymphs, and there's alot of them, with diferent names.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymph

Dryad just sound good in English, and that's prob why it's used.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dryad

[theLuckyDragon]

Naiads and Oceanids also sound good.

[ThunderTitan]

But their in the water. Oceanids have Ocean in the name, so I doubt anyone would buy them as living in a forest.

And Dryad sound way better then both anyway.

[soupnazii]

out of that list, dryads sound the best by far, not to mention make more sense.