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Re: a King's proverb

From:Josh Roth <fuscian@...>
Date:Friday, June 15, 2001, 19:04
In a message dated 6/15/01 8:55:20 AM, Guy.Wade@QTIWORLD.COM writes:

>This just came to me yesterday while listening to a news blurb about the >US/Russian summit. It fits perfectly with the story I am evolving: > >"Before you choose your enemy, speak his language." > >The surface meaning is practical. Of course, this proverb is also full >of >deeper meaning: Choose your enemy wisely, understand him first, don't make >an enemy that should have been an ally. I haven't come up with the >Canotaean translation yet, but I thought I'd throw it out for you all, >if it >pleases you to translate. :-) > >Guy
Good advice! In Eloshtan: Tec cafo mentelenes rri mrewenes tes mologosanoc. (Speak his language, then choose him to be your enemy) te.c cafo mentele.ne.s rri mrewe.ne.s te.s mologosa.no.c POS.3 language speak.SUB.2 then choose.SUB.2. POS.2 enemy.SUB.3 POS=possessive particle, agrees with possessor 2=2nd person 3=3rd person SUB=subjunctive, used to make imperatives, as with the verb mrewefy, and it's used on mentelefy because its just a hypothetical situation (which imperatives are considered to fall under also) "Rri" is used for if-then sequences and also before-after ones, with the first chronological item placed before it, and the next one placed after it - so I had to reverse the order of the English sentence. "Mologosa" is the word for "enemy", a noun, but any noun in Eloshtan can be used as a verb meaning "to be _noun_," among other things. Because of this, possessives can occur before verbs - "tes mologosafy" means "to be your enemy." This translation looked simple at first, but then I found a problem - it didn't seem right to talk about "your enemy" before this person actually exists, since s/he hasn't been chosen yet. So I though I would just say "speak an enemy's language, then choose him" (mologosa tec cafo mentelenes rri mrewenesic) wthout using the word for "your," but that didn't sound right either, because I was still talking about speaking the language of *someone* who doesn't exist, or on the other hand you could even interpret it as talking about a real enemy, but then you would wonder what you'd be choosing him/her for - certainly not to be your enemy, since s/he already is.... So anyway my final version starts out talking about "his/her language" - whose, we don't know - but then we find out later, since we use the 3rd person marker -c again to refer to the potential enemy. There is no ambiguity that the enemy might be a different person then the s/he with the language, since if it were it would have the 5th person marker -ll. (Cafo, "language" is the fourth person.) So basically I got around talking about a hypothetical noun by making it into a verb, which, unlike nouns, can be put into the subjunctive. Josh Roth members.aol.com/fuscian/eloshtan.html