Re: TRANS: Without Words, Without Silence

One thing that I failed to mention is that I took some liberties with the
text, most notably changing the name "Fuketsu" into "teacher."

On Fri, 4 Feb 2000, Patrick Dunn wrote:

> After all this time on the conlang list, I finally offer a text to
> translate.  It's from _The Gateless Gate_, a collection of Zen buddhist
> stories.
>
> In English:
>
> Without Words, Without Silence
>
> A monk asked his teacher: "Without speaking, without silence, how can you
> express the truth?"
>
> His teacher observed: "I always remember springtime in southern China.
> The birds sing among innumerable kinds of fragrant flowers."
>
> In My Nameless Language:
>
> Agverbi, acsanan
>
> monaco rog de rabhu: "agdicende va acsanan, ec at tiposs le declar eta
> vero?"
>
> rabhu respond: "vel sember ezacar eta ver ba Cate nejef.  a aves jisiru
> ba tavek de geni innumerabili de fli sui."
>
> Parallel
>
> Ag-verbi, ac-sanan
> without-words, without-silence
>
> The [g] in ag- turns to a [c] before unvoiced consonents.
>
> monoco rog de rab-hu:           ag-dicende va ac-sanan,
> monk   asked of teacher-his     without-speaking and without-silence
>
> rog is the 3rd person masculine perfect conjugation of le rog, to ask.
> dicende, of course, is the gerund form of le dic, "to speak."
>
> ec at ti-poss le declar et-a vero?"
> how you you-can to declare DO-DEF truth?
>
> "at" is the rising register 2nd person pronoun, used with superiors,
> teachers, and in prayer.
> "le" is the infinitive marker
> "et" marks the direct object
> "a" is the definite article
>
> rab-hu respond: "vel sember e-zacar et-a ver ba Cate nejef.
> teacher-his replied:"I always I-remember DO-DEF spring in.the China south.
>
> vel is the falling register 1st person pronoun, used with inferiors,
> students, and the young.
> ba is a contraction of be+a "in the".
> Cate is a coined word for "china."
>
> a aves ji-sir-u ba tavek de         geni innumerabili de fli sui."
> the birds they-sing in.the midst of kinds innumerable of flowers fragrant.
>
> jisiru is the imperfect third person plural of le sir, to sing.
>