TRANS: Pregnant Duchess (was: weekly vocab)

--- In conlang@y..., Philip Newton <Philip.Newton@G...> wrote:

> Ab soin adhin, soa shoha   e  nasitsë,  er  nikto  rho shri  ab ken!
> By the  Gods,  the duchess is pregnant, and no-one not knows by whom!

In Obrenje:

Aw majki, ummoe voronele, a tetre vaj nedje tasaj.
/aw "majki Mm"mo: vOrO"ne:l a "te:tr@ "vaj "ne:dj@ ta"saj/


Interlinear:

Aw   majki,    ummoe               voronele,  a    tetre   vaj
Oh!  Goddess   be_pregnant:LIQ:3e  duchess:d  and  due_to  who

nedje    tasaj.
know:3e  nobody.


Literal Translation:

"Oh Goddess, the duchess is pregnant, and nobody knows because of
whom."


Smooth Translation:

"Oh Goddess, the duchess is pregnant, and nobody knows by whom."


Comments:

The phrase |tetre vaj| is understood as the accusative object of the
verb |nedje| despite the absence of the accusative preposition |i|,
thanks to its pre-verbal position.

My first impulse was to translate the English line with a relative
clause ("...and nobody knows who caused it"), but it turned out the
Obrenje result was longer and more complicated than the current one,
so I figured a native speaker wouldn't have used it.  Obrenje doesn't
seem to like nominative relative pronouns anyway.  =P


-- Christian Thalmann

Reply