Re: Happy New Year

In one lang, Kosi:

Happy New Year!
=
Lotan hääst' juj' eivi vilakavo!
[lot@n h&:st juj Ejvi vilakavo]
hope-1p good new year-benefactive world-commetative
'I hope for (a) good new year (to be) with (the) world!'

The Kosians are a very caring people, so they say "the world" and not "you".

[Actually, this was a good translation exercise. I had to come up with three new roots,
"to hope", "new", and "world". In the process, I changed the benefactive and
commetative case endings, to make them more euphonious.]

Notes:

1. <hääst'> is a contraction of <häästi> ("good") - the next word begins with
a vowel. The final vowel of <häästi> becomes <j> and attaches to the next
word.

2. <juj'> is <häästi> + <uj> ("new"). Since <uj> ends in a non-vowel, the <j> is retained.

3. The root <eiv> ("year") is put into the benefactive case with the suffix -i.
(Should I do this for "I hope for"?)

4. The root <vilako> ("world") is put into the commetative case with the suffix -vo.

[Want to know more on Kosi? Contact me at <RobertMJung@...> and I'll send you a copy
of the grammar.]

--Robert