Talk:Players

Playful name for Tata

The Players created a new name for Tata when they conquered it and joined it to Dreamland. The name was something like mipatatatatai. However, it likely is not exactly this, because this was based on an error: the Late Andanese word for child is not */pata/ but puta, and it is imperative that pata appears in the name. Possible solutions are:

1. Using /pata/ to mean "hammer", saying it is a variant of /vata/. This is unsatisfactory, hwoever, as it would just mean "land of the ruling hammers of Tata" or some suvch thing.
2. Using hupatatatatai instead, and saying that /hupa/ is L Andanese for "nation, country". This rebracketing would likely shift the /tata/ leftward one syllable, and leave the remaining /tatai/ undefined. this would require reading the /h/ as either an /f/ or an /š/ in Babakiam. However, this does not solve the problem of the party name itself: there must be a word in Andanese to translate Bābākiam pata "play", or else the name of the party will need to become a compound. And if /pata/ exists in Andanese, it would be unlikely for it to not appear in a name like /hupatatatatai/.
3. Using the preexisting prefix pa- that denotes articles of clothing, even if there is no commonly referred to clothing called /pata/ (the Players were not interested in fancy clothes).

Note that the word kitatai means "spear", and that the root of this is tatai. Even so, this may not help, as the morpheme tata, the proper name of the state, would be likely to also appear.