First original text

I just sat down with my dictionary on one side of the screen
and produced my first original text in Wamen. It's a three-line
quite silly poem, but at least it has some basic rhythm...
It's about ownership and greed, and it has no name yet. But
the important thing is that it shows some features of the
language, including some untranslatable quirks (hee hee).

        Amu ly kalpa amu teegasi sa.
        Ai lury ho ai palasi ho saaka.
        Dukasi farewury joki fury ba!


Interlinear:

SUB = verb in (preposed) subordinate construction
GEN = verbal 'genitive' (similar to Japanese -te to join verbs)
INV = inverse verb (object comes first and emphasized); the normal
      order is SOV.
TMP = temporal resumptive relationship (quite meaningless *here*)


Amu   ly        kalpa amu   teegasi        sa.
river be_of.SUB lord  river accumulate.GEN cannot
'The lord of the river cannot keep the river.'

        The verb root <l-> shows that the subject and object have
        a relationship of some kind (not possessive). So the simple
        sentence _Amu kalpa la_ would mean 'the river and the lord
        are related' (cf. the subordinate here). The subject is
        the most important of both nouns. Here the river is more
        important than the lord (he's not the owner, you see!).


Ai   lury          ho     ai   palasi   ho  saaka.
land be_of.INV.SUB person land have.GEN man cannot.be
'The one of the land cannot be the one that has the land.'

        Again you have <l-> here, but inverse-marked; the emphasis
        here is on the person. The root <pal-> 'have' denotes
        alienable possession.


Dukasi   farewury          joki fury ba!
fish.GEN catch.TMP.INV.GEN fish fish fact
'The fish (that was) caught is really a caught-fish!'

        Here we have a pun; _far-ew-ur-y_ 'which was caught' has the
        vowel-alternating root <f*r-> 'catch' (esp. an animal), which
        is the same as in _fury_ 'fish' (once fished, not a living
        swimming fish). The word _ba_ 'fact' is just for emphasis,
        'this is really like that!'.

Comments?


--Pablo Flores
  http://www.geocities.com/pablo-david/index.html
  http://www.geocities.com/pablo-david/draseleq.html