Glastenon Trade Pidgin
From: | Joseph Fatula <fatula3@...> |
Date: | Friday, January 17, 2003, 2:03 |
After some useful suggestions from Christophe, I have begun work on a Pidgin
language in my conworld. It takes its vocabulary from four different
languages in the area, two of which are closely related. It has grammatical
ways of expressing concepts that are common to all four languages, though
usually with independant words, rather than the inflectional or
agglutinative systems of those four. Here is a brief dialog:
O han ceot ber. ¿Ar lo ger?
I many fish have. You this buy?
I have lots of fish, do you want to buy some?
Por, o ger de taven nor shur.
No, I buy that horse with wagon.
No, but I'll buy that horse and wagon.
O taven daru il de rinu ar ber.
I horse trade for that wine you have.
I'll trade the horse for that wine you have.
¿Uli rinu?
Quantity wine?
How much wine?
Un tia.
All of.
All of it.
Por, lo shur nor lo taven il de rinu.
No, this wagon with this horse for that wine.
No, the wagon and the horse for the wine.
O un de daru.
I all that trade.
I'll trade all that.
I'm allowing some flexibility in basic word order, being VSO, SVO, or SOV,
as the three language groups contributing have these three word orders. So
long as the subject is before the object, the verb can be anywhere next to
or between them.
Any thoughts? Does this seem like a pidgin?