jatatēn

jatateen

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 ē jaþēλi ien jakā ānen ansāorīki ien jaxūna ānen anrūēli ī xiēn jē jāxīsse jīlke ī jāo ja la sūjatā ē jāo sūjōl ien jiēxa ānen jasēsi ī jōrrisi ē jatatēn ien ñi jīlkena cē jaþārre ōrra ē jawāññerāñi jīþi nā ī;

and I will discuss the parts of it over the next week.