Re: Simple translation exercise?

I was probably mistaken about the |ma| - now I remember, it's the cut-down,
colloquial form of the first person singular |mina| - with |a| being the
"umlauted a".

Sorry about that.

Wesley Parish

On Mon, 16 Jun 2003 01:37, you wrote:
> Finnish wasn't an inspiration, at least not in general terms. I agree that
> those particular endings look Finnish, but the geminate n only arises
> because of Omeina sound rules, which do not like to have two adjacent
> syllables with the same initial consonant when one of those syllables is
> word-final. A geminate n is considered to be a different consonant to a
> single one. That's why the common incorporating verb-idea *nani
> 'subject-(does something to)-object is realised as nain.
> For example:
> Hartunte ailo bere nani 'the bear sees the (full) moon' becomes
> Hartunte ailo bere nain (literally Bear + ergative / full moon / see /
> it-subj acts on it-obj)
> Hartu 'bear' takes the ergative case -te which again because of the above
> sound rule, inserts a modifying sound (here a nasal) to prevent the
> prohibited sequence -tute#.
> The original form of the durative case suffix was -lala (probably a
> reduplicated form of the -la ending meaning "place at which something is
> done") but this rapidly became -lla. Traces of the original still remain
> after round vowels where this case ending is simply -la.
> I didn't know -ma was the 1pp in Finnish! I suppose both languages have
> fairly strict phonogies, so there's bound to be some overlap. Just as long
> as nobody thinks Omeina looks like Quenya, that's OK!
> Mike
>
> > Omeina reminds me of Finnish.  I take it that it was a major source of
> > inspiration?
> >
> > The |-lla| and the |-nna| terminations are what gave it away, and the
> > |ma| first person plural.  Looks good!
>
> ---
> Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
> Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
> Version: 6.0.480 / Virus Database: 276 - Release Date: 12/05/03
--
Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?"
You ask, "What is the most important thing?"
Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata."
I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people."