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Re: North Wind and Sun in Obrenje

From:Nihil Sum <nihilsum@...>
Date:Monday, August 19, 2002, 1:13
Christian Thalmann sed:

>I found the expression "the more ..., the more ..." particularly >difficult to translate. How do you guys do it in your langs? Lengthy >circumscriptions, idioms or dedicated conjunctions?
With a |nu- X e- Y| pair. Such pairs are common in Rhean, with various correlatives (I think that's what they are). Nuin kunim, er tafam. what I-like, that I-eat I eat what I like. Nudom sis (c'e), edom g'uf (c'e). where smoke (is), there fire (is) Where there is smoke, there is fire. Using |nubie X ebie Y| would mean "the degree in which X happens, in that degree Y happens." Nubie oonigiz, ebie tirgyaie kaec'az. as-much big-they-are, that-much forcefully they-fall The bigger they are, the harder they fall. And of course, a discussion about English "the more ... the more ..." should end with an example we all know. "Beans, beans, the musical fruit." Fa'si, fas'i, sangitec' üyaf Nubie tafat, ebie buskit Nubie buskit, ebie aykiostac'et, Rhu pai razadom fas'in tafyamu! Okay, so it doesn't rhyme... But the more I try to make things poetic, the less they retain their original meaning. (Nubie maruin karidiksoyu sacek fröbam, ebie zetra imic'nan mu akstvaz. as-much things-PL.ACC poetic-DAT make I-try, that-much original meaning-ACC not they-keep) NS _________________________________________________________________ Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com