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Re: translation exercise

From:Michael Poxon <m.poxon@...>
Date:Friday, April 12, 2002, 12:10
Omeina:
Aure ome dilde na:
"Ouloku, elkartuaku!
Gena mahi gerestatua"
De oulo, o elkar da
O mahi gerestatua na.

[voice] [to speak]  [to-me] [auxiliary 3p]
(Note: Omeina only marks the past tense in a "historic" sense, when
referring to noteworthy deeds, myths, legends, poetic emphasis and so on.
General statements simply ignore tense.

[Smile-imp.] [happy-become-imp]
Imperatives with be- (since there is no verb 'to be' as such) are formed
from the adjective plus the 'adjective-to-verb' (ATV) suffix -tua meaning
'to make something become...' The sound written {ou} is the vowel of 'dawn'
represented in the IPA by an inverted c plus colon.

[May (auxiliary) 3p] ['the nature of things', 'the universe']
[bad-comparative-ATV]
(Note: Auxiliaries nearly always come last, but here it is initial because
it is being used in a sense other than description, in fact in a kind of
'mocking' sense.

[Thus, in the end] [smile], [and=conjunction] [happy] [auxiliary, 1p]

[and] ['things'] [worsened][aux. 3p]
Note: Normally the conjunction O 'and' would not be repeated, but here it is
used to parallel the previous sentence.

Mike
> Christian Thalmann wrote: > >A voice said to me: > >"Smile and be happy! > >Things could be worse!" > >So I smiled > >And was happy. > >And things got worse.