Tag: Babel Text

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ñēim

njeeim

ñēim

The next part of the fifth sentence of the Babel text:

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

consists of ñi ñēim makkepōlien. ñēim is the first person inclusive paucal pronoun. The relational ñi is not inflected to match, so “we” cannot be the agent. However, ñi plus rā as a change in location does not generally inflect either. “I went home” is ñi liēn rāmāra. Inflecting ñi as in ñalla liēn rāmāra is “I made myself go home” and implies that I was unwilling to go home or did not choose to go home but was forced to anyway.

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wā

waa

wā

Continuing on the fifth sentence of the Babel text:

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

wā is one of those words that can modify a noun phrase or a clause. In either case it carries a meaning of negation.

So far we have:
And they said to each other: We should make ourselves a name in order that not ….

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tō tūaþ

toospacetuuath

tō tūaþ

Continuing from yesterday on the fifth sentence of the Babel text:

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

tō tūaþ conjoins clauses and signals that a reason is to follow. I tend to translate this as “in order to” or “in order that”.

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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…”

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ja

ja

ja

This is a relative pronoun that relativizes inanimates. In the fourth sentence of the Babel text

ē teteñ ien hēja ñanna jamāonre nīkan jakōnōr ja ñi jōl rā anīstīli;

ja relativizes jakōnōr. ñi jōl rā anīstīli is “make the top of it to heaven” and it is jakōnōr “a tower”.

And they to each other said: We should make a city with a tower whose top is to heaven.

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jōl

jool

jōl

the top of something. This is related to the postpositional modifier ōl, which I blogged about earlier. That completes all the nouns in the fourth sentence of the Babel text.

ē teteñ ien hēja ñanna jamāonre nīkan jakōnōr ja ñi jōl rā anīstīli;

As for the rest, it should all be straightforward. The only word in there I haven’t mentioned before is ja.

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jamāonre

jamaaonre

jamāonre

jamāonre is a word that best translates as “city”. It first occurs in the fourth sentence in the Babel text:

ē teteñ ien hēja ñanna jamāonre nīkan jakōnōr ja ñi jōl rā anīstīli;

Of the four nouns in this sentence, two are already familiar: jakōnōr “tower” and anīstīli “night sky, heaven”. This post discusses jamāonre and tomorrow’s post will discuss jōl.

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te & la

te

te by itself can be either the past tense of se or of la. When in doubt, assume la, since se is usually inflected.

la

la is a relational that takes an object and asserts its existence. So, in the third sentence of the Babel text

ē teteñ ien
hēja ñanna jacālmi jajūti nā
aþ te sāim nīkan jacālmi ñe jakīþi
aþ te sāim nīkan ancēwri ñe anhērmi;

te merely asserts that the object or situation (sāim nīkan jacālmi ñe jakīþi in the first te clause, and sāim nīkan ancēwri ñe anhērmi in the second) is so. It is in the past tense because the whole narrative is in the past tense.

And they to each other (said)
we should make many baked bricks
and they with bricks as stones
and they with mud as mortar.

And that ends the third sentence. The fourth tomorrow.

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ñe

nje

ñe

is a comparative. By itself it expresses an inexact equivalence. So jacālmi ñe jakīþi is “bricks as stones” and ancēwri ñe anhērmi “mud as mortar”, meaning here that the one substance is used in place of the other.

ē teteñ ien
hēja ñanna jacālmi jajūti nā
aþ te sāim nīkan jacālmi ñe jakīþi
aþ te sāim nīkan ancēwri ñe anhērmi;

And they to each other (said)
we should make many baked bricks
and te they with bricks as stones
and te they with mud as mortar

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sāim

saaim

sāim

Apparently I haven’t been blogging personal pronouns as they come up.

sāim is a 3rd person paucal pronoun, so “they, them”. I use paucal to mean a group or a collective, since that is how the paucal pronouns are generally used. However, if the group or collective is large (for arbitrary measures of large), a plural pronoun will often be used. Since the two main characters or groups in the Babel text are the Lord God and the people who build the tower of Babel, and since the people generally act and speak collectively, the paucal sāim is the appropriate pronoun to use.

Other pronominal references in the third sentence include the 3rd person paucal reflexive in the inflected form of se, teteñ, meaning “they to each other” and the 1st person inclusive paucal agent in the inflected form of ñi, ñanna, meaning “we”.

So far then we know:

ē teteñ ien
hēja ñanna jacālmi jajūti nā
aþ te sāim nīkan jacālmi ñe jakīþi
aþ te sāim nīkan ancēwri ñe anhērmi;

And they to each other (said)
we should make many baked bricks
and te they with bricks ñe stones
and te they with mud ñe mortar

ñe I will discuss tomorrow, and then te.