Re: Valentine's Day Translations

At 4:49 pm -0800 11/2/99, Frank George Valoczy wrote:

[GREEK]
>Greek (Classic): ego philo su
I think not - 'su' is nominative case; the accusative, required here, is
the enclitic 'se'.

The subject 'ego' is redundant, as the verb ending makes the 1st person
sing. quite clear, and would only be used for clarity or emphasis: _I_ love
you.
(cf. Christophe Grandsire's comments on French "moi, je t'aime" below.)

it should be: (ego) philo^ se.


In modern Greek BTW, "philo" /fi'lo/ has aquired the meaning "I kiss".  'I
love you' is now, as Nick correctly gave, "s'agapo" /saQa'po/.

[LATIN]
>Latin (Vulgar): eo te amao
While agreeing that the Classical Latin 'ego:' had become something like
'eo' in  spoken Latin, I know of no evidence that the Classical 'amo:'
would become 'amao' in any form of Vulgar Latin.  Indeed, the evidence of
the Romance languages surely suggests that 'amo' remained the form in the
spoken Latin of the late Empire.

Again, in both Classical and Vulgar Latin, as in most modern Romancelangs,
the subject pronoun is used only for clarity or emphasis.  AFAIK, in both
Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin they said: 'te amo'.

[ZULU]
>Zulu: Mina tanda wena
According to my Zulu sources, the initial t- is aspirated and the spelling
is 'thanda'.  The pronouns 'mina' (I) and 'wena' (you) are used only for
emphasis.

It's certainly my understanding of Zulu that the subject (ngi- "I") &
object ( -ku- "you" [singular]) preverbal concords may _not_ be omitted.

AFAIK, the normal Zulu is 'ngiyakuthanda' (-ya- being the present tense
formative affix).
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[FRENCH]
At 8:19 am +0100 12/2/99, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
.....
>
>        "Moi, je t'aime" is possible (but only when you mean "I love you, you
>know" or "_I_ love you, not him"). "Je t'aime toi" is strange. I find it
>awkward but not really wrong. Maybe a little bit childish (this kind of
>sentence is exactly what a little child would say, before making a big kiss
>with a noisy "smack"! :))
Interesting - "je t'aime toi" is exactly what my (then four-year old)
grandson said once before giving me a hug :)

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[THREE CONLANGS]
(All proposed by their authors as potential conIALs)

Novial:  me ama vu.

Speedwords: j am v  [ZI'amv@]

Lips-Kith: serki te (or 'te serki' - 'serki' = I love).

The latter was invented by one Joseph Scarisbrick of Trowbridge, Somerset,
in England & published in 1919 - my many notes on it (I don't have a copy
of his book), however, contain no references to word order :=(

Ray.