liēr

lieer

liēr

On to sentence six in the LCC4 relay text:

sele jakīña ien ñi jatēnnīke ja pa liēr;

More of Tānre’s speech. sele jakīña “I want” and ien ñi jatēnnīke ja pa liēr, which is what is wanted. ñi jatēnnīke is “become joined as family” and really can refer to adoption as well as to marriage. Here it seems to obviously refer to marriage. Then comes ja pa liēr, which modifies jatēnnīke. liēr is a dual pronoun meaning “you and me” or “you and I”, making it a 1st person inclusive dual pronoun.

“I wish that we were joined in marriage.”

manaren

manaren

manaren

We’re still on the third sentence in 14th Conlang Relay text:

se jalāña mo jāŋŋeren jēspe sū ñēim manaren mē;

manaren is an indefinite pronoun meaning “everyone” or “everybody”. Combined with the definite pronoun ñēim, the first person inclusive paucal pronoun, it means “all of us” or “everyone including us”, which is a little redundant since the paucal pronoun is already inclusive, and a little contradictory since the paucal pronoun by definition doesn’t include everyone. However, since paucal pronouns are generally used as collective rather than distributive pronouns, this is a way of emphasizing everyone as a collective including us.

Tomorrow we’ll finish the third sentence.

janaren

janaren

janaren

We’re on this sentence in the 15th Conlang Relay Text:

ewaþ ñaxxa jajāra jaxālāe jatēnnen nā ñe janaren;

janaren is an indefinite pronoun meaning “everything”. The full phrase nā ñe janaren is literally “more than everything” and means “most [of all]”. So jajāra jaxālāe jatēnnen nā ñe janaren is “the most graceful and harmonious dance of all”. And ewaþ ñaxxa is “Yet they make”.

“Yet they make the most graceful and harmonious dance of all.”

No change really from this sentence in the original.

honahan

honahan

honahan

The second sentence of the 15th Conlang Relay Text:

la sāeþ ānen jaxūnīki honahan wā;

honahan is an indefinite pronoun meaning “any kind” or “any manner”. When it modifies a noun, it means “any kind|manner of” noun, and the noun needs to be plural – so jaxūnīki honahan: of all the plans, any kind or manner of them. And ānen jaxūnīki honahan wā “without any kind of plan”, and the full sentence: “They are without any kind of plan.” This sentence is unchanged from the original.

sāeþ

saeth

sāeþ

The second sentence of the 15th Conlang Relay Text:

la sāeþ ānen jaxūnīki honahan wā;

sāeþ is simply the 3rd person plural pronoun. The last animate plural referent was to the dancers, so this also refers to the dancers.

sāen

saaen

sāen 

Now that we have named the story and introduced our characters, the next sentence is:

il ñamma jacēha ja ñi sāen rā jakērþe ōl nō ā macūma il ñi jakērþe jasērre tō jōrwe ēnne;

We already know that ilil means “when” … “then” or “while” … “then”, and we know “horse” and “man” so:

When ñamma jacēha ja ñi sāen rā horse ōl nō ā man
then ñi horse jasērre tō jōrwe ēnne.

We also know that jacēha means “attempt” and ñamma jacēha means a 3rd person entity made an attempt, and looking for an ā phrase, we see “man”, which is a third person entity, so “The man attempted”:

When the man attempted ja ñi sāen rā horse ōl nō
then ñi horse jasērre tō jōrwe ēnne.

We know that ja in this position is a relative clause marker, and it is modifying “attempt”, so ñi sāen rā horse ōl nō is what the man attempted, and we know that ñi denotes motion. Which brings us to today’s word. sāen is the full 3rd person singular pronoun. And our only animate (inanimates don’t get full pronouns), 3rd person singular entity is the man, so the man moved relative to the horse. I will explore the locative phrase tomorrow.

liēþ

lieeth

liēþ

Continuing with relay texts, I said I’d do the 17th relay text, but I have changed my mind. I am going to do the Second Inverse Relay text instead. An inverse relay is where some other poor sucker someone else gets to translate a text into your conlang and then you get it and translate it into the next person’s conlang. Anyway, I’ll do the 17th later. Hopefully, after the 18th, which is still going on.

The first sentence of the 2nd Inverse Relay text is:

il ñi liēþ rā anālhāri il jīlpēneha;

The object of ñi here is liēþ, which is the first person exclusive plural pronoun. So the narrator is talking about groups of people, of which the narrator is part of one group and the listener is not part of any group.

rā anālhāri is “to the ocean”, so ñi liēþ rā anālhāri is “We go/went to the ocean”. All that is left is the il phrase, il jīlpēneha, which I will discuss tomorrow.

ja

ja

ja

We’re still on sentence 6 of the LCC2 Relay Text, concerning a talking rock:

tō tele janūra to makīþa matēnnā jerrasōr tō jāo ñalla ja rā anālhāri mē ānen antāken;

ja is the 3rd person inanimate reduced pronoun. There is no full pronoun for 3rd person inanimate. This form of ja looks exactly like the much more common inanimate relative pronoun ja . The reason it can’t be that ja is that there is no noun phrase in front of it.

The use of ja here initially looks ungrammatical because it refers to makīþa matēnnā, an animate noun phrase. And, indeed, ma would be entirely appropriate here. But, remember I talked about raising things to animacy and imbuing them with personhood. The opposite is also possible and one can interpret this as lowering the talking rock back into inanimate object status. And considering the rest of the clause and the next sentence, that is what is happening here.

ñalla ja rā anālhāri mē is “I moved it into the ocean” signalling a change in location for the talking rock.

The talking rock’s reply made me angry that I moved it into the ocean…”

riēn

rieen

riēn

This is very simply the 2nd person singular pronoun. Now, for the LCC2 Relay Text, concerning a talking rock. Sentence #2:

ē ñalla jakīþa jatēnnā rā lekū mē ōl aþ telme ien la riēn makīþa matēnnā kēñ;

This has all been blogged before (or just now). Three notes of interest, however.

1) ñalla [x] rā lekū mē is the circumlocution used to indicate that one has taken something [x] into one’s hand. The [x] is jakīþa jatēnnā, “the talking rock”. ōl is used to indicate upwards motion, so “took up into my hand”.

2) In the first clause, the talking rock is inanimate singular. In the second clause, which asks “Are you a talking rock?”, the talking rock is animate singular. This is called raising to animacy and happens when one imbues something with personhood, for example by talking to it as if it could answer back. Lowering something to inanimacy happens when one is removing personhood from something or someone. Not a nice thing to do.

3) We discussed reduced pronouns earlier this week and I mentioned that it is considered polite to reduce the 1st person pronoun. It is exceedingly familiar and thus impolite to strangers to reduce the second person pronoun.

ē ñalla jakīþa jatēnnā rā lekū mē ōl aþ telme ien la riēn makīþa matēnnā kēñ;
And I took the rock up into my hand and then said to it, “Are you a talking rock?”

le

le

le

Continuing with the first sentence of the LCC2 Relay Text, concerning a talking rock:

il talōnte tiēlen ñi le rā jahāwekien nō il ñi lerāka jawāna sū jakīþa ja pa antēnnā ōl;

le is the first person reduced pronoun. It does not specify number, so it can mean I or we, either inclusive or exclusive. Reduced pronouns do not usually occur as the object of a relational, but it is also considered more polite to use the reduced pronoun in the first person. Since this story is told in the first person as if it were an anecdote of something that happened just yesterday, it is appropriate here.

rā jahāwekien nō is “along the beach”, all these words having been blogged before.

“Yesterday I was going along the beach…”