Re: A new translation exercise (was: lexicons)

On Thu, 1 Apr 1999, John Fisher wrote:

> Interlinear glosses are the devil :-)
Doyarsien ("very precisely"). I think there isn't a single one of uw
who has escaped having to post a correction to their own interlinear
text.

> Actually "lisnien" is a noun,
> formed out of "lisni"="be young" and "en", and means "a young person".
> I could have written "Cwand inye caro-lorye pani lisni"="When my
> g.g.father was young..." but I decided to stick closer to the original.
If you'd translated from the Valdyan you wouldn't have had the
problem; I did the same thing in the English version.

"Tate somoch in tay razie" can also mean "when my g.g.father was
young", because _razie_ is both a noun and an adjective (it's
annoying that Valdyan has no grammatical terms of its own, and a
Language Academy doesn't fit into the culture). This one is mainly
substantival, others (like _lest_ "blue") are mainly adjectival, but
there's no fundamental difference.

"Lisni" and "lisnien", by the way, look like well-formed Valdyan
words: close to _lesne_, _lesni_ "child, children". This means a
child of about 3 to 11; before that one is _novie_ "baby, nursing
child" and _nute_ "toddler", and after that _hanie_ "teenager,
adolescent", _razie_ "young adult", _salne_ "adult" and _ruvie_ "old
person". _Nute_ is also someone's child of the body, at whatever age:
I used it in Fabian's exercise for "son", who was clearly old enough
to ask questions.

   Irina

            Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastinay.
                     irina@rempt.xs4all.nl (myself)
     http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/frontpage.html (English)
    http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/backpage.html (Nederlands)