Re: A Charyan Brothel Song in Teonaht

>=20
> I'm trying the Teonaht version. The Charyan original
> is a bit more difficult, and also I think a literal
> translation would be at least... hm... improper for
> the Dr=E1selhadh culture. But I'm not being a puritan
> over here -- indeed the song made me realize my
> Drasel=E9q dictionary lacked a few *very* important
> concepts.
>=20
Of course - the Teonaht poem is the exercise posed. I've
now got a Dutch translation and will do a Denden one today.
As for dictionaries - I once was interviewed on the radio
about Denden and the interviewer was thumbing through the
dictionary. At that moment I really wished I had translated
the lexemes in question into Latin!


>=20
> > lamay-neran.men
> > song-stroll.AMA
>=20
> What does this mean? I don't get it. What's the master-
> subordinate order?
>=20
strolling-song, wandelliedje, wanderlied. There's a very
fluid transition between compounding, noun-adjective
relations, noun-stative verb and noun-verb relations in
Denden, complicated by the fact that Denden is the lingua
franca of a great many people, and the monuments of Denden
that have come to us all exhibit in greater or lesser measure
the influence of the authors mother tongue. Generally, though,
the order is master-subordinate, while the sentence pattern
is SVO.=20

_neran_ is a verb, which is qualified with <-men> AMA: that does
not really mean 'lovingly walking', but rather that the speaker
is in love with the adressee. _Lama_ means song, the diminutive
suffix <-y(i)> DIM is used so often that I have _lamay_ as a seperate
lexeme in my lexicon.


<snip>
>=20
> _i =EDngiman n=E2vnimbal b=FCnd_
> "the one being sung a prayer to"
>=20
> is unambiguous. (_b=FCnd_ =3D 3rd person common gender pronoun,
> accusative and relative).
>=20
What a beautiful construction!


Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt