Re: Quick language sketch -- Hrondu

On Fri, 26 Jan 2001, Eric Christopherson wrote:

> > Here's a sample text, the first two lines of Wulf and Eadwacer, or, in
> > Hrondu, Wulefa Edawakaa tu
>
> What is "Wulf and Eadwacer"? I've never heard of it, but Eadwacer looks like
> a form of the name of that Germanic (Vandal?) chieftain, Odovaker or
> Odoacer. Am I right?
*scribbles a note*  If you are, I have a paper!

Wulf and Eadwacer is an Old English poem which is both beautiful and
absolutely incomprehsnbiel.  It's incomprehensible because we have no idea
who Wulf or Eadwacer are supposed to be.

Where'd you read about this Vandal chief?  Is this the same one who drove
*snaps fingers*  damn what was his name?  out of Italy for thirty years?

> > ss ya hrecapa ni undau lpa ssndu ya ss e jisa jii!
> > he SUBJ camp LOC come.COND and they SUBJ he OBJ kill.will kill
> > If he comes to the camp, they will kill him for sure
>
> First, why two words for "kill"? Does doubling the verb give it that "for
> sure" sense?
Yup.

> Second, I really like the way you use condition + "and" to make
> if-sentences. I've had the same idea but haven't put it into effect yet. I
> think I got the idea for it from Unix shell (bash) scripting, in which the
> following statements do the same thing:
>
>         if test -f /foo/bar; then cat /foo/bar; fi
> and
>         test -f /foo/bar && cat /foo/bar
>
> For the non-Unix-savvy, these both check to see if a file called /foo/bar
> exists and, if it does, then display the file. The second (more seldom used)
> type is the one that reminds me of the kind of condition sentence you made;
> "test" can be glossed as a conditional affix or "if," "-f" as "exists," "&&"
> as "and," and "cat /foo/bar" as "display /foo/bar." Thus:
>
>         test   -f   /foo/bar &&    cat   /foo/bar
>         COND   exists /foo/bar and display /foo/bar.
>
> I hope I made sense there :)
A bit.  :)  I spent a bit of time pondering if/then clauses.  I'm still
not sure how to do relative clauses.  Might do them like Japanese does --
but I might not, either.

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