Re: Another Translation Exercise

On 4/19/06, caeruleancentaur <caeruleancentaur@...> wrote:
> >veritosproject@... wrote:
> >Ok, this one is John 3:16.  If anyone doesn't know, that's "For this
> I translated directly from the Greek text.  Literally, it is:
>
> thus for loved the God the world, that the son, the only-begotten,
> he-gave, that every the believing in him not may-perish but may-have
> life eternal.
I also translated from the Greek.  Here it is in phase 1 of my
new engelang, still known only as "conlang #13":

fäk'e vdä shpäb'ä zhbam'o zhden'i shkañ'e vdä ghbag'ä skil'a zhoñ'i ghap val
ghe, zlib'e vdä zhoñ'i xpu sjo xlä feg'ä shpa zhoñ ghe shep, vgo zhbi xog'u
vob'u xto, fkä shäl'ä zhjä vob'i shñel spañ.

fäk'e      vdä  shpäb'ä   zhbam'o zhden'i   shkañ'e  vdä  ghbag'ä
cause-PREP that love-V.TR God-ERG world-ABS way-PREP that give-V.TR

skil'a   zhoñ'i     ghap val      ghe, zlib'e       vdä  zhoñ'i
past-MOD person-ABS only child.of 3    purpose-PREP that person-ABS

xpu sjo  xlä feg'ä      shpa zhoñ   ghe shep,
all INDV REL think-V.TR FOC  person 3   true

vgo zhbi xog'u        vob'u       xto, fkä shäl'ä    zhjä vob'i
IMP OPP  begin-V.INTR live-V.INTR not  and have-V.TR MIR  life-ABS

shñel   spañ.
without boundary

ABS	absolutive noun
ERG	ergative noun
IMP	imperative particle
INDV	individuator particle; here, makes "all" > "every"
MIR	mirative particle
MOD	modifier ending
OPP	opposite-of preposition
PREP	prepositional ending
V.TR	transitive verb ending
V.INTR	intransitive verb ending

C13 has two-level marking of semantic categories and parts
of speech.  Roots have their semantic category (substance,
process, quality/quantity/state, relationship) marked by the
final consonant, which also implies a default part of speech
(noun, verb, modifier, preposition), but vowel endings (as in
Esperanto) can be used to change this default part of speech.
For nouns and verbs the vowel endings are required
in many contexts (I'm not sure of the details yet) as they
mark transitivity and case as well as part of speech.  I suspect
I can dispense with the transitivity markers pretty often, and
I already dispense with the case marker when a substance-root
follows a preposition.

Note that since "son/daughter of" is a relationship, the root
"val" is by default a preposition.  Here I render "his ... son" as
"person ... son.of him".  I'm not sure yet what the nominalization
of a relationship root should mean; the relationship in the abstract
(e.g. sonship), or an entity that's in that relationship to an unspecified
other entity?  The problem is that with other relationship roots
the more useful nominalization would signify the relationship.
E.g. "near" > "proximity" rather than "neighbor".

I'm already dissatisfied with the phonotactics and self-segregation
scheme (every word beginning with a fricative is too monotonous)
and am tinkering with rules to generate words for the next relex.
But I'm going to stick with my plan to write more stuff in phase 1 of
the language and get some meaningful frequency data before I run the
relex.  The corpus is only about 350 words so far.

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry