The Relay Museum

lyín kabàlëki ésöp'n ròg na-vítip'n àn líaclianic, àn kàlicianic,
   të àn yiàlaclianic
lyín kabàlëki ésöp'n khàdelü nàcash ka'shírsap'n làma
lyín kabàlëki ésöp'n nícnöm dóvi të bóltëcan níkin

hró týpatatëp'fa dà'c, na-ésöp'da à níllip cilitàlapi füshínnö ciliditàpi,
   yt'píhlcüp'da dèlchëmëa
hródi enèd na-ésöp'n dàgë tymàmr ki'büralóhlp'r fàcash
të lúthian ki'cilishíhlrap'të dàgë talàfiaba. 

Winter is the wolf that takes the old, the sick, and the very young
Winter is the hard rock on which nothing grows
Winter is the cruel beak and the sharp talon

And so we beg you, bounding boy of spring, dance over the earth
So that the sun your mother will look down upon us
And flowers will spring from your footsteps. 

Notes about orthography:
The mërèchi love diacritics. The diacritics are mostly meaningless (they encode
vowel pronunciation as well as stress, but stress is not usually important and
vowel pronunciation is rarely other than standard). If you cannot read them, the
interlinear is presented diacritic-free, and the vocabulary includes
diacritic-free versions of all the words.

The apostrophe is written by convention to indicate where certain prefixes and
suffixes have been attached to a word. It is not pronounced.

All the vowels in the text presented have the standard values:

    	a, à	/A/
    	e, è	/E/
    	ë, é	/e/
    	o, ò	/O/
    	ö, ó	/o/
    	i, í	/i/
    	ü, ú	/u/

Additionally, y in some contexts (and ý always) is /i/.

Consonants also have IPA values except:

    	c	/k/
    	ch	/x/
    	hl	/l_0/
    	sh	/S/
    	y	/j/ (except after t, when it is /i/)

Key to symbols/Glossary:

ACC (accusative)

-c			after vowels
-ic			after consonants

ADJ (adjectives)

dóvi (dovi)		cruel
kàlici (kalici)		sick
líacli (liacli)		old
níki (niki)		sharp
yiàlacli (yialacli)	youngest

ART (articles)

à (a)			definite article, singular
àn (an)			definite article, plural

CONJ (conjunctions)

të (te)			and

The grammar defaults to English-like unless otherwise specified. Note, however,
that "hró" in this text is used only in a way that English "why" is not, and
which is best translated by "for which reason, ..."

Mërèchi features postpositional phrases (just like prepositional only
backwards). Overall sentence structure is SOV, and adjectives follow the noun.

Verbs take a tense or mood prefix, an aspect suffix, and a pronoun/agreement
suffix. For optative mood, the -hl- infix follows the stressed vowel. Pronouns
can either be suffixed to verbs (if they are the subject of the sentence or are
agreeing with a noun in subject position) or can occur elsewhere with an
accusative or postpositional suffix. If the sentence appears to have no subject,
the subject is the pronoun on the verb.

The relative pronoun na, if it is the subject of the subclause, becomes a prefix
to the verb; otherwise it stands alone and can take case suffixes and
postpositions.