Thursday, May 13, 2010

Ohazishi ath vensháo

It's very late. I am very tired. This is not enough to keep me from posting here, is it?

There was a much earlier entry about greetings, but it failed to have some common expressions like "Good morning" and "Good night". I am ready to tackle those now. Here's one:

Ohazishi ath vensháo ("Keep yourself safe tonight") -- This is a departure version of "Good night". It's just what they'd say. It might even be what you'd say to someone going to bed, but I will have to think on that more when I am more awake.

I am going to bed now. Ca mer noa.
Ohazishi ath vensháo

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Hrmph

In the previous entry, I'd translated the first 28 lines of McGuffey's First Reader. I had started working on more, but nothing is ready to post yet. Instead, I will address a problem in what I've already done.

13.Fwipi sul ya tase ya valtem adadi.
This is supposed to mean:
The man can see the boy run.

Adadi would be a adjective out of the verb, "adad". I was thinking at the time that it would be something like a present participle in English and that ya valtem adadi would mean "the running boy" which would seem close enough. It's not right though. It doesn't mean that he's running now, but that he's a boy who runs a lot, runs habitually, or likes running, something like that.

Let's have another go at it...
Fwipi sul ya tase ya valtem kwe ki adad lia.
potential-nonpast-3rd-sing-(perceive) see the man the boy (acc) that(relative clause opener) nonpast-3rd-sing run (relative clause closer).
The man can see the boy that runs/is running.

I think that's close enough.

In a later edit:
On the other hand, I could just let "adadi" mean what I intended in translation *and* also have those other meanings as well. Now that I am giving it a second thought, I think I'll just leave it as is.

(So now you get to see some of my process in action. Things change, change back, and then change again all the time.)