Re: translation exercise

Roger Mills <romilly@...> wrote:

>>>
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.
<<<

Tunu:
Kune tenu a licho i:
"Chime i nata wa ticha!
Oi chachama a peno toli chuka chongoma!"
Wai kami a nata wa ticha
Wai chachama a toli chani chuka chongoma...

ugh... lots of sad "ch"s here.

Kune tenu a tailicho i:
(Some voice TOP encourages that:)
"Chime i nata wa ticha!
("cheer-up that smile and rejoyce)
Oi chachama a peno toli chuka chongoma!"
(From-that events TOP can already [be] more unfortunate!")
Wai kami a nata wa ticha
(And-that i TOP laugh and rejoyce)
Wai chachama a toli chani chuka chongoma...
(And-that events TOP already become more unfortunate...)

>>>
Kash:
kotani mangos:
kota-ni     mangos
word-of it  voice
<<<
i'm mystified by Kaç's "-ni"... :-) at least as much as by Denden's "ga". i
expected "mangos kotani" instead. i must admit i have a hard time
"visualizing" what is whose when word order is reverted like here.

This being said, i am "experimenting" a very similar suffix "-ng" with Tunu,
but with a fixed word order:
Tenu a mamatung i...
Voice TOP words-its that...
The voice's words [were] that...

I find it handy for clause junctions:

example:
wa konong i...
with cause-its that...
"because..."

for now i use attributive mai- "to have":
wa maikono i...
with having-cause [which is the fact] that...
"because..."

Tunu also has an equative lai- "to be":
wa laikono i...
with being-cause [of the fact] that...
"which is why..."

The new "-ng" suffix would fit very logically as the origin for the "-ny-"
and "-my-" exo- and endotropic pronominal objective suffixes. actually,
that's how i created these suffixes. but i hated "-ng" alone because it also
meant a serious breach to the years'long golden rule that all Tunu syllables
are open!
oh well, japanese got its final "n" eventually as well...

mathias



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