Re: colorless green ideas

taliesin the storyteller wrote:
> * Herman Miller said on 2008-09-29 04:32:54 +0200
>> Going through old Tirelat documentation, I ran across a
>> translation of "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously".
>>
>> Zharshai zimi xhula jazezijan xhazarpini.
>>
>> I compared this with my recent translation of "Colorless green
>> dreams sleep furiously" for CALS.
>>
>> Saj žarĕšaj ziimi žaadi żazaŕpini vyzëzišaj.
>> NOM.PL colorless green dream furiously 3p-sleep-AOR
>
> Not a lot left of the old language... Zharshai = žarĕšaj,
> zimi=ziimi, xhazarpini=żazaŕpini and that's it? People have been
> doing the same with Tolkien's languages. Who was it that said
> that conlangs aren't alive? If the conlanger keeps tinkering
> they're as alive as anything :)
jazezijan = vyzëzišaj, but that's less obvious; the root is zezi / zëzi.
A literal equivalent of "jazezijan" is "jĕzëzijan", but the second time
around I translated it differently from English. The choice of the
tense/evidential suffixes is one of the tricky aspects of translating
into Tirelat from English.