Re: Religious text in Conlangs

Empaelivpeith Jake X:
>How many of your concultures have religions?
I'm not religious myself, so I haven't really focused on creating religion
in my conworld.  (This doesn't imply that I'm against religion existing on
Cresaea, it's simply not a major part of Cresaean life as far as I know.
And what I know is very little.  :)

>Sacred texts?
Nothing sacred per se, but I have been toying with some mythology/fairy
tale stories.

>P.S. I'd be very proud if this is used as a translation excercise.
>I'd like to see it in different conlangs and have a collection.  It's
>a little short and unchallenging, perhaps.
Just because Cresaeans aren't religious doesn't mean their language can't
handle religious texts!  :)  Perhaps we'd have to explain to them some of
our religious concepts, but it's only a matter of lexicon.

>In the womb-dream, the goddess made us drink the word.
>We were thirsty, we breathed it.
>We stood.      We spoke it.
>Now we are humanity.
Vek'sharoln urumavpotninlim lorán'can ne sharíd.
Jhor'davith uruman t'en im, ves'vashev n'o.
Kyelsaev.  Shav n'o.
Vik'jhor dasáem t'en im.


BIA N'OM   ("New Things")
========
|davith|   /"dAvIT/  adj. "wanting"; from |sholdav|, |goldav| "to want"
|kyelsaev| /kjEl"sev/  v. "to stand"; from |kénillev| "to see" and |saea|
"grasslands"
|sharoln|  /SA"ro**/   n. "womb"; from |shalnen| "soul"
|vashev|   /vA"SEv/    v. "to breathe"; from |vash| "air"

** This is a sound I don't know how to describe well.  It's nasal retroflex
alveolar, and when produced the tongue tip initially touches the alveolar
ridge, but then by the end of the sound the back of the tongue blocks the
air passage by contacting the velar.  It's sorta like a consonantal (nasal
syllabic) diphthong.  Suggestions for naming this sucker appreciated.  :)

|urumav| means "to water".  |urumavni| means "I water" and now |urumavnili|
means "I water me/myself" -- that is, "I drink".  I'll have to come up with
some historical-linguistics reasons why the plant-word supplanted (hehe; no
pun intended, honest!) the personal one...  Perhaps their native
environment in the grasslands affected this?  Perhaps whatever the plain
word "to drink" was sounded too similar to a taboo word and dropped out of
usage?

In verb suffixes, |-nim| followed by |-l-| assimilates into |-ninl-|.  And
it turns out that some consonant clusters that are otherwise not allowed
according to Asha'illen phonological contraints may appear in verbal
suffixes when too many epenthetic |-o-|'s get tossed around.  Originally it
should have been |-potoni| but it protested that it was better off being
|-potni| instead.  I'll just have to trust its judgment.

Normally in |jhor'A t'B| constructions, the noun is A and the adjective is
B (if one is equating a noun and adjective).  However, reversing the
typical order is a poetic style and seemed appropriate here.


Thanks for the translation exercise, Jake!  :)

--
AA

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