jatatēn
This word refers to a reason or explanation. I am going to blog a few grammatical terms for the next week, and the reason I am doing so is this wonderful sentence I found in Lord Dunsany’s The Charwoman’s Shadow:
“He taught the use of consonants, the reason of vowels, the way of the downstrokes and the up; the time for capital letters, commas, and colons; and why the ‘j’ is dotted, with many another mystery.”
I turned this into a translation challenge on the conlang list. It’s not an easy one, since part of the challenge is to adapt it the particulars of the conlang’s writing system. My translation ended up being:
temme Ä“ jaþēλi ien jakÄ Änen ansÄorÄ«ki ien jaxÅ«na Änen anrÅ«Ä“li Ä« xiÄ“n jÄ“ jÄxÄ«sse jÄ«lke Ä« jÄo ja la sÅ«jatÄ Ä“ jÄo sÅ«jÅl ien jiÄ“xa Änen jasÄ“si Ä« jÅrrisi Ä“ jatatÄ“n ien ñi jÄ«lkena cÄ“ jaþÄrre Årra Ä“ jawÄññerÄñi jīþi nÄ Ä«;
and I will discuss the parts of it over the next week.