Re: The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.

--- Sylvia Sotomayor <kelen@...> wrote:

> On Monday 09 August 2004 18:31, Trebor Jung wrote:
> > How would your conlang(s) translate this? The
> primary obstacle, to me, for
> > translating of this sentence into Kosi is that I
> can't seem to figure out
> > what 'by' means here...
>
> híja ñamma jaláe jarwá ñamma jánne to ñamma jawíra
> jakíthi rá;
> conditional-future make/do/become+3p.sg.agent
> mountain unmade-thing
> make/do/become+3p.sg.agent beginning from
> make/do/become+3p.sg.agent burden
> stones to/away.
>
> He who would un-make a mountain makes a beginning
> from making burden of stones
> (taken) away.
>
> He who would remove a mountain starts by carrying
> stones away.
>
I understand "remove" is not exactly "un-make"; it
would rather be "to take away from this place", "to
make disappear".

The word "by" denotes "method", IMO. There is
instrument (by what means), and there is method (which
way). One can remove a moutain using a shovel and a
wheelbarrow, that would be instrument. One can remove
it by carrying away stone after stone, that is method.

A variant of this aphorism is: "The journey of
thousand li begins with a single step".

------
By the way, here is something completely different. I
read today in Paris suburban train "Ne descendez pas
sur les voies, sauf si le contrôleur vous le demande":
Dont't get down onto the track, except in case an
agent of the company asks you to do so. So I of course
soon thought I could tag the word "sauf" (except) and
write "même" over it : même si on vous le demande =
even if someone asks you to do so. But immediately I
discovered it could be even more funny if I wrote
"surtout": surtout si on vous le demande = above all
if somebody asks you to do so. Ah ah, that was
interesting ! What else could I find ? Well, I
searched and searched, and the result was: nothing
else. It seems that the only possibilities of an
adverb modifying a condition introduced by "si", at
least in such a sentence, were :
- même si (even if)
- sauf si (except if)
- surtout si (above all if)

Isn't this surprising ? Is it the same in English ?
And in other languages ? Why is it so ? How comes I
have nothing more clever to do at this time of the day
?

(And who needs to be told not to get down onto the
track ? Especially when the train moves at 50 mph).



=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)


		
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