Re: New Translation Exercise >>> The Actual Song Lyrics

Here's my rough-n-ready  translation of the "actual song lyrics" into my
conlang Tesk.

Although I'm here in Israel, I haven't bothered to get the original
Hebrew copy, so I'm translating Steg's translation.

' after a vowel = acute accent
` after a vowel = grave accent
^ after a vowel = circumflex
' before or between consonants = an apostrophe

*****

> "freedom, freedom, for all the children,
xurerei xurereite xeele navladna'

>  so that they won't tell us what to eat and what to think.
ze zouden't ons vese^, wat vakel, wat vepens

>  freedom, freedom, for all the children,
xurerei xurereite xeele navladna'

>  a great great great freedom!
'n kabier kabier kabire xurerei!


>  so that they won't ask us to do what we don't want [to do],
ze zouden't ons vetalb, wat saw, ons will niet saw nie

>  and so that they won't say things that we don't understand.
ze zouden't ons vese^ sjajen, wat ons niet vefahe:m nie

>  so that all the children will go up into the trees
al'te navlade:te sjajjerenna` mait

>  and all the adults will become small.
en't al'te kabiren pekeen zall.


>  freedom, freedom, for all the children,
xurerei xurereite xeele navladna'

>  a great great great freedom!"
'n kabier kabier kabire xurerei!


*****
Comments:

xur = free (from Arabic); plus suffix (e)rei = -ness, -dom
xurereite = the -te at the end is the suffix-form definite pronoun,
governing "children" (avlad) later down the sentence

xeel = all, whole lot of (declined as an adjective, so adding -e when
governing a following noun).

navladna = to (the) children: avlad = children (based on Arabic broken
plural awlaad; broken Arabic plurals are only used in Tesk for a few
particularly lovable concepts or words; the w>v switch is also
affective); the n at the beginning is one of two euphonic consonants
used in Tesk - "n" is added at the beginning of any word beginning with
a vowel if the preceding word ends in a vowel,and between two vowels
within Germanic/Indo-European words; "t" is used between two vowels in
Semitic words.

ze zouden't = they shouldn't - subjunctive. (the indicative would be ze
zoudn't). The subjunctive here is equal to "that they might not..." or
even "let them not..."

vese^ = the transitive of se^ = to say. v(e)- is the universal prefix in
Tesk for making a verb transitive or emphasizing its transitive
function.

wat vakel, wat vepens = what to eat, what to think - two more transitive
verbs, from the Arabic akal and the French pense(r).

kabier kabier kabire = you wouldn't usually string the same adjective
together like this in Tesk, but since I did - the first two are in the
undeclined form, while the one immediately before the word it qualifies
is in the declined form, which essentially adds an -e (as in Dutch), but
with changes in the vowels.  Kabier means great or huge, from Arabic
(and indeed Hebrew).


If you've followed these comments, the next line -

ze zouden't ons vetalb, wat saw, ons will niet saw nie -

should be reasonably clear. vetalb is to demand (from Arabic root TLB -
the T is emphatic, though Tesk doesn't attach much importance to such
petty phonetics, so this isn't marked orthographically).

Saw (sounds like sow, a female pig) = do (from colloquial Arabic). This
is one of a very few undeclinable and invariable words in Tesk. Another
is mavet = death, die (from Hebrew).

Ons is "we", as in Afrikaans, though I decided on the word under Dutch
influence (where it is the accusative/dative form (us)) before I knew
Afrikaans, as I mentioned a while back in the thread on linguistic de'ja
vu.

Note the Afrikaans style double negative: ons will niet saw nie = we
don't want to do.


sjajen = things - plural of sjaj (from Arabic).

vefahe:m = to understand (from Arabic root FHM)

al'te navlade:te sjajjerenna` mait - literally:
all the children the trees-to might

avlad (children, as noted above) here takes not only the euphonic "n" at
the beginning, since it follows a vowel, but also the suffix definite
pronoun form -te, but since that should follow the "d," a conflict
arises. This is resolved by the insertion of a schwa (written e with
dieresis, which I write e: here).

sjajjer = tree, plus regular plural (e)n.  -na is the postposition for
to, towards. Like all postpositions it takes an acute accent on its
first (in this case - only) vowel when tagged on to a word.

mait = might, should, ought - a vague subjunctive type modal.  But as
very often in Tesk, the modal has no actual verb with it; the idea of
"go up" is considered to be adequately implied by the postposition -na'
on the noun sjajjeren.


en't al'te kabiren pekeen zall - literally:
and all the big-ones small shall

A similarly structured line to the previous one, and once again - the
only verb is the modal "zall" (shall, will) at the end; "become" or "be"
is implied.

pekeen = small, of a human, especially a child, from Spanish pequen~o,
IIRC, but also influenced by the old British Empire slang word
piccaninny meaning a little Black, etc, child (a racist and patronising
term which I DON'T condone, but that did influence my selecting this
word when I was 15-17).

*****

Well, that's it. I'm not a linguist, as is surely evident from the
above, and I know that my explanations veer toward the etymological and
the anecdotal rather than the kind of staggeringly professional phonetic
and analytical linguistic notes so many of you can provide!  This is the
first time I've really tried to present something of Tesk on the list -
I'll be very interested if anyone has any feedback.

Be honest yet gentle!



        Shaul Vardi