Thursday, 18 November 2010

Sentences 4.26-27

Ten ítí eng kotte ot niwú?

Moniant pena kebalnia tratia, magari ya kembí en dâkotte

Where are there some on sale (It be-at some sold away-from-speaker at.where?)

If you go on the main street perhaps you may buy some (going-on in main street, perhaps of you some come-buy)

Interesting structure to the sentence, borrowed from the original Chinese dialogue, just to confuse me.

Moniant is the verbal noun, to go up, to mount, to ascend. It appears that it is even used to what would be flat ground, on main street.

Kebalnia, main, has the adjective ending for a feminine noun. The stem of the word means 'head'; and tratia is 'street'.

Magari is the word for 'perhaps', borrowed from Italian, and looking a bit too obvious, IMO. I may have to disguise it further. It is followed by the preposition ya, which in this position acts as a jussive, let.

And en is the pronoun some, which takes the n-ending before a word beginning with D.

Sunday, 14 November 2010

Sentence 4.26

Ten ítí nassodin kotte ot dâ

There were none on sale here.

The pronoun none is based on Italian nessuno. The first morpheme is na- rather than ne- in this language so the vowel changed. Then I substituted the second morpheme uno for slavic odin which has become the default for 'one' in this language. I kept the linking double-ss in the centre so it's the same word really.

Saturday, 13 November 2010

Sentence 4.25

A ítí ten eng kotte ot dâ?

Are there any on sale here?

Ten ítí, it is-at, is used to mean 'there is'.

We have used em twice in these sentences. Eng is a varient form that occurs before words starting with k-. It is an example of sandhi at work in this language.

We have seen dâkotte, buy, or transaction coming to me. Its partner is kotte ot, sell, or transaction away from me. Away-from-speaker has its own particle, ot.

The stem of the verb 'come' ends the sentence being used as an adverb of place.

Friday, 12 November 2010

Sentence 4.24

Nimaraga

In the market.

A sentence of a single step. The stem word is maraga, market. It's classified as a place word and can take the coordinate prefixes, the same as was used in the previous sentence.

Thursday, 11 November 2010

Sentence 4.23

Kembí ve dâkotte te niwú?

Where did you buy them? (You bought them at-where)

Two new words:

Dâkotte, bought. The stem is kop-, buy or sell. With dâ-, come, prefixed the transaction is towards the buyer.

Niwú, where. The interrogative place word , where, has a coordinate of place ni-, at or in, prefixed to it.

Wednesday, 10 November 2010

Sentences 4.21-22

Te katatôkí tí duon, kodin?

Shim monion duon


Those cigarettes are good, aren't they?

Not very good.

The word for 'very' is the neuter of moní, great, used to mean 'greatly'

Tuesday, 9 November 2010

Sentence 4.20

Nam, da tí meskoren

No, it belongs to the teacher.

Usually is followed by ya when it means 'belong'. An exception is made here. The word for teacher is made of two parts. The first part means 'my', a possessive adjective; and the second part means 'lord' or 'sir' as a title. The first part of the word has the genitive ending mes so ya is dropped; the second part of the word has the oblique ending koren. Literally the sentence is It is of-teacher.

Monday, 8 November 2010

Sentence 4.19

A tí da butilka inon yiha dua?

Is the bottle of ink his too?

Butilka, bottle, is a new word. Readers might recognise it from Russian. Yiha, his, is taken from a Indo-European language I have taken several attempts to create. I used this form because it turns up in various forms in different languages. So the third person possessive pronoun comes from a different stem than the other forms of the pronoun. The sentence ends with the balance word dua, which can be translated here as 'too, also'.

Sunday, 7 November 2010

Sentence 4.18

Da tíhim a bodú. Da tí ya shadrome bodú

It is not mine. It belongs to my friend.

Literally She is-NEG of 1s. She is of friend 1s.

The negative adverb is him after a vowel, and shim after a consonant. It comes from the Welsh not ddim. In this language TH and DH sounds become S. The deep grammar form of this word is *sim. Between two vowels S becomes H producing -him, and on a whim I decided to disguise *sim as -shim after a consonant.

Friend is shadrom, shadrome in the indirect object case. This is a last minute change. I have played with príant from Germanic and mik from Romance. This third option comes from a Turkish construct where friend means back-fellow (fellow at your back?). Says something about how Turks perceive friendship! This means I will have to go back and change the causative verb for 'accompany, get up'.

Saturday, 6 November 2010

Sentence 4.17

Da trinia tugika tí ya kembi, kodin

The writing brush is yours, isn't it?

Well that troubled me for a moment. Why had I introduced a new adjective into the sentence, trinia? The masculine would be triní. I looked at the original text and it fell into place. The stem of the word means 'hair'. So trinia tugika means 'hair-like writing-tool', a writing brush. So this language makes its own concepts.

At least I used the correct pronoun for 'yours' unlike in sentence 4.14. I must go back and correct it in the dialogues.

I went to a class on how to do Chinese calligraphy a couple of weekends ago. It was cool. The brush is held between the first two fingers and the thumb of the right hand. The second two fingers are held against the same side of the brush as the thumb. It is always held in the right hand, no allowances for southpaws as is now the practice in writing the latin alphabet. There are eight basic strokes to be learned. In writing the stroke resting the brush against the page, and lifting it at the end of the stroke is part of good calligraphy. It was a fascinating class to do and a good introduction to how another culture records information.

Wednesday, 3 November 2010

Sentence 4.16

Ai da em?

What about that one?

I like this sentence. It surprised me when I created it. It's not the way I normally think in language.

Ai is a question marker. It is used when the next word is not a verb. In this case it is the pronoun da, so that is grammatical. Ai and a, which comes before verbs in questions, are borrowed from Welsh. Em is another pronoun introduced in this dialogue modifying da so it becomes that one (of them) or that one (of two).

A question made of two pronouns. I like it!

Monday, 1 November 2010

Sentence 4.15

Da dônia tugika tí ya bodú

That steel pen is mine.

One new word, steel, dôní. It's an adjective and have the common adjective ending -ní. In the above sentence it agrees with the noun and takes the feminine ending. It is singular so it doesn't take the n- ending found in plural cases.