jānnien

jaannien

jānnien

the East.

The second sentence of the Babel text:

il ñatta jarēþa rūānnie il ñatta jamāesa japōññe sū jekiēn xīnār il aþ ñatta āke jamāramma;

contains the word rūānnie which is – + ānnie, the stem for “east”. rūānnie therefore means “from the east” and – + ānnie or rānnie means “to the east”. There is also – + ānnie for “at/in the east” but the form is sūānnien with a final –n like the singular noun jānnien. All the compass direction words follow this pattern more or less. The final –n is akin to the -(e)n suffix used with clan names when they are turned into stative nouns.

The word occurs in the first clause of the second sentence. The clause is ñatta jarēþa rūānnie. ñatta is the relational ñi inflected for a 3rd person paucal (or collective in this usage) agent. jarēþa is a singular noun that means “journey”. So the first clause can be translated as “they made a journey from the east”.