Re: Challenge to puzzle-lovers: Vampire dialogue from "Blade"

Marcus Smith wrote:

> Padraic Brown wrote:
>
> > One thing I notice is 3 if clauses that share little in common.
> > Either the 'if' element is part of some other part of speech, or
> > they do not have if clauses in the way we do (in Engl). Two of
> > them seem to have an -AZ element. Perhaps you could work from
> > that.
>
> On the other hand, all three contain <ch> in the first word.
>
> I would actually distinguish at least two words for "if", perhaps three. In
> sentence (5), "if" introduces a subjunctive, but in (2) and (3) the
> conditional has a different mood (I'll call it indicative, just to give it a
> name).
I'd noticed that.  The first two uses of "if" are conditional ("if we break the
treaty", "if we gather in numbers"), while the third use is counterfactual ("if
your blood were pure").  This might be important.


> So the indicative conditionals contain yach as in _yachtu_ and
> _ochach_.  We don't see <y> in the second example, because _yach_ was
> prefixed by _ot-_ of unknown meaning.  t + y -> ch; standard palatalization
> rule. _yachtu_ has a suffix of some kind as well.
Perhaps "ot-" means "and, also"?  But then someone else pointed out the
similarity between "ochach" (in a clause containing "we") and "mabochachi"--or
"mabo chachi" (in a clause containing "our lives").  Perhaps "ochach" is a form
of "we", and "chachi" means "our"?

Of course, there's nothing like "chach" in the second clause ("if we break the
treaty") or in the sixth clause ("Don't we have enough trouble with Blade?").
Perhaps the second clause is actually a passive:

  yach to  spuli  lit-wa
  if   the treaty break-PASS
  "If the treaty is broken..."

As for the sixth clause, notice that this contains the word "tat", which looks a
bit like the (possibly) second person form "krat".  Perhaps "tat" is an oblique
form, something like "to/of/unto us".  So the meaning of the sixth sentence is
literally something like "Isn't there enough trouble to us from Blade?":

  si    kalu    pala   tat   kapro Blade?
  isn't trouble enough to-us from  Blade
  "Don't we have enough trouble from Blade?"


> > PROTO is an interesting word, as it seems to have two divergent
> > meanings. Perhaps some semantic drift happened, yielding the
> > meanings of 'spirit' and 'nation'.
>
> Or, _proto_ is "spirit, vampire, undead".  Compounds are right-headed, just
> like in English.  So _lukchano_ is "nation", and is related to the word
> _uchano_ which signifies some kind of small group of people or a ruling body
> of some kind -- "council" perhaps. (Who are the Twelve?)
My first interpretation of "proto" was as "pro to" = "of/to the":

  reda-ni   pro to  uchanu
  spirit-PL of  the twelve
  "(the) spirits of the twelve"

  krat     pruchiri busistampol  pro to  luk-chano,      Frost
  from-you disgrace has-befallen to  the vampire-nation, Frost
  "You have disgraced the vampire nation, Frost"

I have a gut feeling that "spirits" is actually "redani".  The reason for this
is that Fromkin used "-ni" as a plural marker in Paku, her language from 'Land
of the Lost'.  But of course, that's just a hunch.  There's no "-ni" suffix in
the sentence containing "human politicians", so I'm probably way off.

Matt.