Re: Hi from Ukraine

On Saturday 24 November 2001 00:02, Padraic wrote:

> Am 23.11.01, Irina Rempt yscrifef:
> > It's collective plural,
> > to signify that it's not one language, but all the mutually
> > understandable (well, if you live less than about 50 miles apart,
> > otherwise it takes some getting used to) dialects of the same
> > language taken together.
>
> Now, I like that way of looking at it. Would the singular of
> ilaini mean "a single dialect" or similar?
Oh yes. It's deliciously more complicated than that:

layen - speech sound, an utterance
ilain - (dual) speech. language, dialect
ilaini - (collective plural of the dual) collection of dialects, the
Valdyan language.

This is not used for foreign languages: they're all
"<country-in-the-genitive> ilain".  Probably because it's hard to
distinguish dialects when you're having trouble understanding the
language to start with.

> Any other examples?
Plenty, most of which I need the database thingy for that I'm too
lazy/hurried to reinstall right now, but off the top of my head:

dayen - water
idain - body of water, lake so large you can't see the other shore,
sea
idaini - ocean, all the seas in the world

rhin - boat, ship
rhini - ships, fleet (you don't see whether it's a normal plural or a
collective plural in the nominative, but in other cases the normal
plural gets -e- and the collective plural keeps -i- : _rhineni_ "of
the ships", _rhinini- "of the fleet".

   Irina

--
           Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastynay.
irina@valdyas.org (myself)     http://www.valdyas.org/irina/valdyas