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Re: TRANS: Fw: names of ants

From:Matt Pearson <jmpearson@...>
Date:Wednesday, May 3, 2000, 14:49
I can think of two ways to translate this into Tokana:

  Tuntei suehonotits esiantsa mifo
  nobody-DAT remember-NEG-the.PL name-their ant
  "Nobody remembers the names of ants"

  Tuntei ispukotits esiantsa mifo
  nobody-DAT learn-PERF-NEG-the.PL name-their ant
  "Nobody has-learned the names of ants"

Of these, I think the second one gets closest to the meaning.
The first one means something like "Nobody can ever manage
to recall the names of ants", implying that they did know
their names once.  The second one means "Nobody ever
masters (learns completely) the names of ants".

This is not a very Tokana-like sentiment, I think, although
I'm not sure exactly why...

Matt.