Re: a King's proverb

Andrew wrote:

> Am 06/16 16:34  Dan Jones yscrifef:
> > andrew wrote:
> >
> > > Am 06/15 07:55  Wade, Guy yscrifef:
> > >
> > > > "Before you choose your enemy, speak his language."
> > > >
> > > Inawant yno ceos sew inifig, parolath sew llinghedig.
> > >
> > > before one choose.pres.sg pron.reflex.poss enemy, speak.pres.2.pl.
> > > pron.reflex.poss language.
> >
> > Andrew, I feel like a right ffeil di pudan for saying this but this
sentance
> > really jars my romance ears. Brithenig doesn't have to conform to
western
> > romance norms by any means, but "inawant" by itself should mean "before"
in
> > a strictly spatial sense- when used in a temporal sense I would expect
> > something like "inawant ke" followed by the subjunctive or "inawant di"
with
> > an infinitive.
> >
> There is no need to feel a ffeil di pudan (is it putana(m) or
Long u, pu:tanam, I think, otherwise I would expect Italian potana. However,
I think it's a reborrowing anyway- VL *pu:tam should give French *poue and
Spanish *puda, not pute and puta. Maybe Brithenig "putan"?

> pu:tana(m)?) but something I needed to be corrected on.  That means it
> should be:
>
> Inawant k'yno ceos sew inifig, parolath sew llinghedig.
>
> or:
>
> Inawant di cheosar d'yn inifig, parolar sew llinghedig.
I prefer the first personally, but the second is more elegant. Both sound
equally correct. So, can I persuade you to make the subjunctive productive
again? It's used a lot in western romance.

Another quibble- the switch from 3s indicative in the first clause to 2p
imperative in the second is odd too. In French I'd say:

avant qu'on choisisse son ennemi, il faut qu'on parle sa langue. (back me up
here Christophe)
before REL one choose.3s.subj his enemy, it is_necessary REL one
speak.3s.subj his language.

"avant qu'on choisisse son ennemi, parlez sa langue" just sounds, well,
wrong. "Falloir" is from VL *falle:re (IIRC), so that gives B. ffalluir,
with present ffalth or ffallt (I can never remember whether "lt" becomes
"llt" or "lth"), followed by the subjunctive- of course:

inawant k'yno ceos sew inifig, sa ffallt k'yno parol sew llinghedig.

Of course, it's *your* language, I'm just asking about its romance
authenticity.

> > I presume that -awant is cognate to the French "avant". If so, the form
I
> > would have expected from VL *abante would be afant, not awant.
> >
> Inawant comes unchanged from the ur-text.  I have never corrected
> although I have some times wondered about it.  I guess it comes from
> in-abante.  Following a rule not yet written up, it should have become
> ino/ant in the modern language (/aw/ becomes /o/ before a stressed
> vowel), similar to a rule in Welsh, but applied in reserve order.  The a
> is marked with dieresis.
>
> > BTW, what is the spirant mutation of "k"?
> >
> {ch}, the difference between {c} and {k} is purely orthographic.
I was more thinking if we had two hypothetical words, *cell and *kell,
pronounced /tSeK/ and /keK/, the soft mutation would be *gell and *ghell,
pronounced /dZeK/ and /geK/. In the spirant mutation this would be *chell
and *chell, but with different pronunciations: /CeK/ and /xeK/, presumably.
However, the orthography does not indicate this?

> I had toyed around with a new Romance language using avant for spatial
> and devant for temporal.  Would this still have to be devant que... to
> feel right to you?
Hmm. I don't know. The idea of having two words for two concepts is bizzare
and alien to me ;o). I think the rationale behind linking the "before"-word
to the rest of the sentance with a relative particle is that "avant que" is
elliptical for "avant cette fois que". I could be very wrong- bear in mind
that I haven't been a L1 speaker of a romance tongue since I was five!

Dan

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La plus belle fois qu'on m'a dit
          "je t'aime"
                   c'était un mec
                             qui me l'a dit...
Francis Lalane
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