Re: Translation: The Lay of Leithian

> The Lay of Leithian
> 1. Of Thingol in Doriath
>
> 1. A king there was in days of old;
> 2. ere Men yet walked upon the mould
> 3. his power was reared in cavern's shade,
> 4. his hand was over glen and glade.
> 5. Of leaves his crown, his mantle green
> 6. his silver lances long and keen,
> 7. the starlight in his shield was caught,
> 8. ere moon was made or sun was wrought.
Well, I'm trying to make up a nice noun paradigm
in Rinya - shortening all the old case suffices.
Much umlauting taking place. I'm very inspired
by Old Icelandic. Two new vowels have been introduced
in Rinya - {ø} /2/ and {æ} /&/ - and two new diphtongs
- {øy} /2y/ and {ou} /OU/.

Anyway, I needed a break and just for fun I translated
The Lay of Leithian into Swedish, while we're on this
Swedish drive. It took only a few minutes to translate
it so don't get all worked up now. :) I'm sure it's been
done before, but here's the Danielic/Danielian/Danielesque
version:

En kung där fanns i gamla dar,
innan Män på jorden var.
Ur grottans skugga kom hans makt,
i dal och glänta hans hand höll vakt.
Hans mantel grön, av löv hans krans,
lång och vass hans silverlans.
stjärnljuset i hans sköld gav glans,
långt innan månen och solen fanns.

It's not *that* bad I think. At least it rhymes...

å is a with a ring
ä is umlauted a
ö is umlauted o

Daniel

PS. 'I learned Swedish in Uppsala' would in Swedish be:
'Jag lärde mig svenska i Uppsala'.
[jA 'l&d.E mEj 'svE~ska I *Up:sA:la]
where [d.] is retroflex [d] and [U] is Swedish short {u}.
{'} is acute pitch accent (like ordinary stress) and {*}
is grave pitch accent. Try to stress both {U} and {A:}