anhērmi
A collective noun designating mortar, defined as a semi-fluidic substance used to hold bricks together, and appearing 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;
ancēwri
A collective noun designating mud and appearing 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;
jacālme
Brick, as in a building block of shaped clay. The third sentence of the Babel text has to do with bricks.
ē teteñ ien hēja ñanna jacālmi jajūti nā
aþ te sāim nīkan jacālmi ñe jakīþi
aþ te sāim nīkan ancēwri ñe anhērmi;
The word even appears twice, both times in the plural. Other nouns appearing in this sentence include the stative anjūta “baked” appearing as jajūti and modifying jacālmi to make “baked bricks”, the plural jakīþi “rocks, stones”, and the collectives ancēwri and anhērmi.
il aþ
is an il word meaning “and then”, expressing something subsequent to something else. In the second sentence of the Babel text:
il ñatta jarēþa rūānnie il ñatta jamāesa japōññe sū jekiēn xīnār il aþ ñatta āke jamāramma;
it acts as part of a coordinating conjunction connecting the three clauses in the sentence. So:
while:
they made a journey from the east
during which:
they found a plain in the land Shinar
and then:
they made there their home
While they journeyed from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and made there their home.
-mma
This suffix is a shorter way of saying nīkamma, expressing association with a 3rd person entity. So, in the third clause of the second sentence of the Babel text:
ñatta āke jamāramma
jamāramma would mean “their home”, –mma referring to the same 3rd person (paucal) entity as –atta in ñatta. The clause means “they made there their home”.
āke
there, yonder. This word implies a much further distance than the usual word for “there” xō, which I notice just now that I haven’t blogged. Hmm.
In the second sentence of the Babel text:
il ñatta jarēþa rūānnie il ñatta jamāesa japōññe sū jekiēn xīnār il aþ ñatta āke jamāramma;
āke occurs in the third clause as the object of ñi inflected for a 3rd person paucal agent, along with jamāramma, which is jamāra “home” with the not-yet-discussed suffix –mma.
sū
This prepositional particle denotes location at, in, or on somewhere. In the Babel text, the phrase sū jekiēn xīnār is a prepositional phrase headed by sū. jekiēn means land, and xīnār is a representation of the proper name Shinar. So sū jekiēn xīnār is “in the land of Shinar”. The second clause (ñatta jamāesa japōññe sū jekiēn xīnār) of the second sentence (il ñatta jarēþa rūānnie il ñatta jamāesa japōññe sū jekiēn xīnār il aþ ñatta āke jamāramma;), therefore, is “they found a plain in the land of Shinar”.
anpōññe
This word from the second sentence of the Babel text refers to the quality of having been discovered or found. It modifies the word jamāesa which I mentioned earlier and which means “a large flat valley or plain”.
il ñatta jarēþa rūānnie
il ñatta jamāesa japōññe sū jekiēn xīnār
il aþ ñatta āke jamāramma;
The phrase jamāesa japōññe “a found plain” appears in the second clause in the second sentence as the object of the relational ñi inflected for a 3rd person paucal agent. It is best translated as “they found a plain” sū jekiēn xīnār. We will discuss sū jekiēn xīnār tomorrow.
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 rū– + ānnie, the stem for “east”. rūānnie therefore means “from the east” and rā– + ānnie or rānnie means “to the east”. There is also sū– + 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”.
ān tēna
This phrase is a combination of the numeral one (ān) and a modifier meaning “all of a set” (tēna). Together they denote a complete set of one. In the first sentence of the Babel text:
iēlte la anmārwi pa antaxōni ān tēna;
ān tēna modifies yesterday’s word antaxōni “language” to make a phrase meaning a set of only one language. So the sentence can be translated as:
Once long ago, the world had only one language.