Re: TRANSLATION: Grandfather and the dragon

* Sally Caves (scaves@frontiernet.net) [990716 17:40]:
> taliesin the storyteller wrote:
>=20
> > > If you've got the equipment, Tal, and I know you do! <G> it would b=
e
> > > easier for me to conceptualize this if you made a realplayer file
> > > (.ra, not .rm!) and read it.  This is so hard to contain in my head.
> >=20
> > I don't have realproducer, but I could make a .wav or .mp3... ;)
>=20
> I can hear wave files with my Real Player.  Say, can you hear my
> files with your equipment? ;-)
In windows, yes.

> I made a birthday webcard for my Dad last weekend, and Chris and I
> (my husband) thought it would be funny to "whistle" his birthday
> greeting into my producer.  Well, it sounded fine except for the
> fact that any breath on the microphone sounds like a tornado.
Listening to recordings of my own voice makes me nauseous, oh ick, so=20
I'll twist the sound a little, for my own well-being's sake :) Hmm...=20
I've only taped myself speaking Norwegian... have anyone noticed how
much the quality of ones voice changes when speaking foreign languages
(as in not L1)? When I started becoming fluent in English, I spoke about
two octaves lower than normal at first.

> > > Where is the concept "my" expressed in your
> > > language?
> >
> > 'my', if the thing is animate, is <te>. If the thing is inanimate,
> > you use a genitive-construction. A have-construction is also a
> > possibility.
>=20
> Or a preposition (if you have those): the friend with you, etc.
> Much discussed already several months ago.
No prepositions at all. In fact, I am going through the vocab now, as=20
I'm updating the webpages... how did all those affixes get there? :)

/snippage/
> > te tci
> > my friend
> >=20
> > brene=F0
> > my car
> >=20
> > sa:es brenru
> > I have a car
> > (A car is loacted relative to me)
> >=20
> > As you can see, most of the time the first person singular pronoun is
> > implicit.
It is -not- implicit for experiencer-verbs and in the have-construction,
propably some more too.

> > /snip more on experiencers/
> > > > When the experiencer-verb only governs a phrase and not a new sen=
tence,
> > > > that phrase is marked with the benefactive (BEN).
> > > >
> > > > Example:
> > > > sa:el a:r         u:  te=EC  i:a=FE
> > > > I-EXP thinks.that you love he/she-PAT   (PAT patient)
> >=20
> > To make matters sligthly clearer:
> >=20
> > I-EXP thinks.that (you love he/she-PAT)
> >=20
> > This is the primary use of experiencer-verbs, the BEN-use is a side-
> > effect, though a nice one.
> >=20
> > > > u:el    te=EC  i:i=F0
> > > > you-EXP love he/she-BEN
> > >
> > > This is actually very much like Tokana, which I think is patterning
> > > itself in this instance after several active languages that put the
> > > subject of "experiencer" verbs in the dative.
>=20
> But I thought your Beneficiary was an oblique case like a dative.  In
> Tokana, I think you say:  To me feels blue ("I'm feeling blue").  It's
> an awful lot like the OE impersonal verbs (which I thing derive from
> a similar construction):  "It rues to me."  I regret something.  "It
> seems to me."  I think.  But perhaps I misunderstand your BEN.
The EXP is closer to this, it leads to 'me thinks' and 'me feels'... Hmm.

Of course the BEN also does the job for dative, though not quite:

i:     ri:  u:i=F0 brena=FE
he/she gave you  car

u:i=F0 ta  brena=FE i:on
you  got car    from.him/her

<-on> is wrong here, it's for inanimate instruments only, but I haven't=20
discovered the animate affix yet.

The 'cases' are not as syntactically based as in indo-european langs.

> I notice you've got an ancient race called the "winged ones."  How like
> Teonaht as well!  They base a lot of their mythology on the "feleonim,"=
=20
> who were supposed to be a long-dead race of winged felines (although I'=
ve
> recast the word that I originally drew from "feline" to mean "beautiful=
=20
> goers," i.e., "flyers.")
Well, the cu (also: cua=EC) are spacebased shapechangers, they "fly" thro=
ugh
space, and hang around habitable worlds to rear their young, to shower,=20
party and to pick up the latest fashions and gossip in their neverending
struggle to keep boredom at bay. A battle most lose and thereby lose thei=
r
sanity in the process, sooner or later leading to the Final Death.

This, of course, is a gross over-simplification, as the various cu races
differ *a lot* from each other, much like a siberian tiger is not the sam=
e
as a cheetah or the common house cat, or a wolf for that matter.

> And "Teon" seems to mean "flight," as in=20
> "retreat, running." Whether on foot or by wings, it's unclear.
"va=EC" means both "fly" as in 'move through the air/void/space' and "run=
"
as in 'move quickly'. "Flight" as in 'flee, escape, run away, retreat'
is not covered though. Still don't know what word(s) cover that.


tal.