sawēra

saweera

sawēra

So, the fifth sentence of the Babel text:

ē teteñ ien hēja ñanna lewēra tō tūaþ wā ñi ñēim makkepōlien rā anmārwi āñ pēxa;

This starts off easily enough. ē teteñ ien “And they to each other said” and hēja ñanna “we should make…”. And then there is lewēra. This is the first person possessive form of sawēra, an obligatorily possessed noun meaning “name”. Except that name (also jawēra) is not actually obligatorily possessed. Or rather, it doesn’t have to be. This is one of those nouns that can be possessed or not, and when it is it means “one’s name considered as an integral part of oneself” or maybe “one’s self-identity”.

ē teteñ ien hēja ñanna lewēra “And they to each other said: we should make ourselves a name…”