Re: The...the...
| From: | Harold Ensle <heensle@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, April 20, 2006, 20:32 |
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On Wed, 19 Apr 2006 21:16:10 -0000, caeruleancentaur
<caeruleancentaur@...> wrote:
>How do you express the concept "the...the..." as in "the more, the
>merrier" in your conlangs. Senjecas does not have the definite
>article, so I'm looking for some suggestions.
>
>I know that Spanish uses "cuanto...tanto...."
>
>What exactly is the etymology of the German "je...desto..."?
>
>Thanks.
>Charlie
>=========================================================================
Boy....people on this group continue to come up with
interesting things to translate.
I never considered this construction before.
But what does "the more, the merrier" mean?
It means: if there is more, then there is more merriment.
So it is just a causal relation disguised.
Thus Ankanian would have "Taxia voru peflaxia."
(lit. Should there be more, then there would be more merriment.**)
Or one could also say "Peflexia däxwair." (lit. there
is as much merriment as there is quantity.) This last
one corresponds more to the cuanto...tanto construction.
**since the Ankanian conditional relation was already
compact, there was no need to develope a special
construction for this relation.
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