Tag: Relay Texts

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āñ

aanj

āñ

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

la sāeþ ānen anexīmi wā ānen sawūrre āñ ēmma;

sawūrre is the word for one’s voice. The particle āñ is modifying sawūrre and is acting as a reflexive marker, thus implying ‘own voice’. Since the entire phrase ānen sawūrre āñ ēmma is modifying sāeþ ‘they/them’, and since possessed nouns as a rule do not show plural marking, ānen sawūrre āñ ēmma is best translated as “except for their own voices”.

la sāeþ ānen anexīmi wā ānen sawūrre āñ ēmma;
“They are without music except for their own voices.”

There are only minor changes between this sentence and the original one I submitted in the relay. One minor change is the plural marking on sawūrre. The other is the singular inflection of anexīmi.

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anexīmi

anexiimi

anexīmi

The next sentence in the 15th Conlang Relay Text:

la sāeþ ānen anexīmi wā ānen sawūrre āñ ēmma;

As mentioned a few days ago, ānen … wā is ‘without’ and ānen … ēmma is except for. So this sentence is “They are without anexīmi except for sawūrre āñ.”

anexīmi is a collective noun that means “music”. I will discuss sawūrre āñ tomorrow.

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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.

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jaxūnīke

jaxuuniike

jaxūnīke

The second sentence of the 15th Conlang Relay Text:

la sāeþ ānen jaxūnīki honahan wā;

jaxūnīke means “plan” and is derived from jaxūna which I will be blogging later as it also appears in this text. It appears here in the plural form.

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ānen

aanen

ānen

The second sentence of the 15th Conlang Relay Text:

la sāeþ ānen jaxūnīki honahan wā;

ānen has appeared before as a preposition that when combined with a stative noun makes a clause-level modifier. It also has other functions. For instance, here it combines with the particle wā to mean “without”. In the next sentence, it combines with the particle ēmma to mean “except for”. The object of these phrases appears between ānen and the particles. So, ānen jaxūnīke honahan wā is “without jaxūnīke honahan“, which are the next two words I’ll be blogging.

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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.

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satākken

sataakken

satākken

The first sentence of the 15th Conlang Relay Text:

sere majjārien mo ritākken cī;

ritākken is the 2nd person inflection of the possessed noun meaning “attention, notice, focus”. “Experience with your attention the dancers” would be a decent mostly literal translation. “Pay attention to the dancers” would be better English. The original first sentence was se jatākken mo majjārien cī; which had attention as a regular noun, so whose attention was ambiguous. Also, by having the dancers be the beneficiary, it adhered too closely to English syntax. In the sentence “Look at the dancers”, the dancers are obviously* the object of se: “Experience with your eyes the dancers”. It only makes sense to have the same structure for “Pay attention to the dancers”, despite the fact that English doesn’t do that. But then, that is one of the challenges of having four relationals instead of thousands of verbs.

*Obvious to me, anyway. 🙂

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majāra

majaara

majāra

The first sentence of the 15th Conlang Relay Text:

sere majjārien mo ritākken cī;

majjārien is the plural of the animate noun majāra which means “one who dances|is dancing”, “dancer”. The relational se here is inflected for a second person singular experiencer, so this sentence is addressed to you, the reader or listener. What you are experiencing is the dancers, what you are experiencing with, ritākken, will be discussed tomorrow, and the cī at the end there makes this whole sentence a polite suggestion.

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jawāññerāñ

jawaannjeraanj

jawāññerāñ

So, the 18th Conlang Relay is still not quite finished, the book that I’d been waiting for arrived and is now read, and while I could go on with numbers (indefinitely :-)), I have been slowly redoing various older relay texts. The older the text, the more work it is because the language has changed. Today, I will start blogging the 15th Conlang Relay text. (Yes, I skipped the 16th.) The original text I submitted is here, the rewritten text is here.

The first sentence in the text is the title:

se jawāññerāñ;

jawāññerāñ is the word for riddle or paradox. This makes the title of this text: “The Riddle”, or “Here is a Riddle”.

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annōña 

annoonja

annōña

We’re on the last sentence of 17th Conlang Relay Text:

tō ñi jarāki rā macūma ōl tō jakērþi tō jāo ñi macūma manōña;

This sentence consists of two clauses connected by tō … tō jāo which denotes that the first clause is a direct cause of the second clause. The first clause is ñi jarāki rā macūma ōl tō jakērþi. Here the instrumentative tō is naming the inanimate agent of ñi. The object of ñi is jarāki rā macūma ōl “(many) steps on top of the man”, making this clause: “The horses made (many) steps on top of the man” For the second clause it starts “and therefore the man became” manōña. manōña is the animate form of the attribute annōña which means “dead” as in “not alive”. So this sentence is telling us that the thousands of horse trampled the man to death. The end.

That’s the end of the story, as the sentence se jatōrren; indicates.

In full (since it was a short text):
xiēn jē jakērþe japīña;
se macūma; se jakērþe;
il ñamma jacēha ja ñi sāen rā jakērþe ōl nō ā macūma il ñi jakērþe jasērre tō jōrwe ēnne;
ē ñi jakērþe rū macūma pēxa ī ñi sāen mañāka;
ñamma jarāka rū xō ā macūma ānen antānre;
se jarūlōn to jakērþe ī ñi jakērþi ōraen rā xō;
tō ñi jarāki rā macūma ōl tō jakērþi tō jāo ñi macūma manōña;
se jatōrren;

Concerning the bad horse.
The man. The horse.
When the man attempted to get up on the horse, the horse stood upright on two legs
The horse moved away from the man and attacked him.
The man quickly moved away.
The horse gave a loud cry and then thousands of horses arrived.
The horses trampled the man to death.
The end.