| Smooth translation: |
The rainy season is like the elderly, the sick, children and caracals on the
hunt. It is like the rock that cannot grow plants. It is like a predator's
remorseless teeth or its sharp claws. Consequently, we ask you, "Are you kind
during the planting season?" You wander through the soil, and greet Ilue with
love, and greenery trails in your wake. |
| Glossary/mini dictionary |
a (part.) indicates that the subject of the sentence is brand new, or different
from the previous
ai (adv.) question marker (as an adverb, placed sentence-finally to mark a
question)
e (part.) indicates that the subject of the sentence is the same as the previous
sentence
-e (det.) the singular definite article (idiomatic, in many cases; can be safely
ignored, I believe, in translation. Rely on context to figure out what's
definite and not. As a suffix, this attaches most commonly to the predicate
marker /i/, but also attaches to prepositions)
eli (v.) to love; (n.) love; (adj.) loving; (adv.) lovingly
faka (n.) the planting season (i.e., the season most suitable for planting)
falele (v.) to be green; (adj.) green; (n.) greenness; greenery, foliage;
forest
feiki (v.) to grow; (n.) growth
fupo (v.) to be old; (adj.) old; (n.) an elderly person
heva (prep.) over, all over, across, all throughout, throughout, on, upon
he'eilili (v.) to sicken; (n.) sickness, jaundice; (n.) a sick or infirm
person
i (prep.) predicate marker
ia (pro.) 2nd person, singular pronoun, "you"
Ilue (n.) Darynese deity of planting, the morning, and of birth and the creative
spirit (this is a direct borrowing from Darynese: the language of the person who
sent their translation to me. I didn't know what to do with this, so I'm passing
the buck to you ;)
kamelaye (v.) to wander around aimlessly, slowly, not rushing, enjoying the
wander
ke (n.) tooth
keli (v.) to trail behind, to leave a trail (e.g., for X to trail behind Y [the
latter can be dropped when the thing it's trailing behind is implied or already
known])
ku'etinivie (v.) to have/show no remorse for one's actions; (adj.) remorseless
lawaveke (n.) the rainy season
-le (suf.) causative marker (attaches to verbs)
leya (n.) stone, rock
lutiuvini (n.) predator (borrowing from Zhyler)
mali (n.) child
mamaka (v.) to greet, to welcome; (n.) greeting; (adj.) inviting
notu (v.) to hunt; (adj.) hunting; (n.) (a/the) hunt
o (prep.) genitive preposition (X o Y = Y's X or X of Y. X must be an inherent
part of Y)
oi 1 (conj.) conjoins two (or more) NP's or two VP's
oi 2 (prep.) during
oia (contr.) contraction of /oi/ and /a/
oie (contr.) contraction of /oi/ and /e/
oku (adv.) no, not (as an adverb, placed sentence-finally to negate the
sentence)
otu (n.) claw (of an animal)
-pe (suf.) suffixes to the subject status marker of the sentence, and renders
the meaning "therefore", or "and so", "so", etc.
peka (n.) earth, soil, land, country, nation
pikio (n.) caracal (a type of lynx) (borrowed from Zhyler, by means of Sathir,
by means of Njaama)
po- (pre.) prefixes to the subject status markers to indicate the beginning of a
relative clause
takeke (v.) to be like, to act like, to be similar to; (n.) similarity
takenevi (v.) to be kind, generous; (adj.) kind, generous; (n.) kindness,
generosity
ti (prep.) because of (idiomatically precedes a quote)
tiva (v.) to be sharp; (adj.) sharp; (n.) sharpness
-u (art.) marks the plural (definite or indefinite), and is suffixed to the
predicate marker
ua (conj.) or
uei (pro.) first person, plural, exclusive
uela (n.) moss
ulaya (v.) to ask
Note: There's lots of fairly opaque derivational morphology going on above. I
listed pretty much all the morphologically complex words as their own entries,
rather than listing the base forms and the affixes. The only places where I
didn't are where the derivation is fairly transparent. |
| Grammar notes |
The romanization is very close to X-SAMPA. The only differences are that an
apostrophe ' is a glottal stop [?], and a y is a palatal glide [j]. Just some
general stuff: Kamakawi VSO, with prepositions, no cases, and the adjective
follows the noun. More specific information will be given below, and you can
also get info from my website: http://dedalvs.free.fr/kamakawi/main.html.
Just a couple quick notes. First, Kamakawi uses a switch-reference system not
unlike Hittite. Luckily, there are only two of the markers used here, and
they're the two easiest to understand. Basically, the first word of any clause
will be a marker which will indicate whether the subject of the sentence is the
same as that of the previous sentence, or whether it is different/new. So, of
course, the very first marker will always indicate a new subject. The new
subject marker is /a/. After the first sentence is through with, and you go on
to the next sentence, though, there are two possibilities. If the second
sentence begins with /a/, this means that there is a new and different subject
from the first sentence. If the sentence begins with /e/, this means that the
subject of the second sentence is the same as the subject of the first. If this
is the case, the subject will not be specified (in this way, Kamakawi is a kind
of pro-drop language).
A second note is about the word order. Kamakawi is VSO, but specifically, it'll
be: (1) Subject marker; (2) verb; (3) subject NP; (4) predicate marker or other
preposition; (5) object NP (either of the verb or the preposition; (6) other
PP's; (7) adverbs. Since there is a lot of zero derivation in Kamakawi, and
since adjectives follow the nouns they modify, and since adverbs come sentence
finally, it can look, on paper, like a final adverb is actually an adjective
modifying the last NP. When spoken, there would be no confusion, since the
phrase-level intonation would differ, but in writing, I'll simply say: Be aware
of this.
A final note is that there is an obligatory predicate marker /i/ in Kamakawi. It
precedes all nominal predicates, unless replaced by another preposition (this
happens in one sentence above). When the subject is dropped, the predicate
appears before the very first NP. What this means is that while a normal
Kamakawi sentence (with a transitive verb) looks like: "A verb X i Y"--a
sentence with the same subject marker will look like "E verb i Y". A final note,
when a verb has multiple direct objects, the predicate marker /i/ must precede
each object.
That should be all the necessary notes that can't be handled by the wordlist to
follow. A word of caution: There is one relative clause above. It shouldn't be
tough to figure out, but if you're having trouble with it (or identifying it), I
have a section on relative clauses on my website at:
http://dedalvs.free.fr/kamakawi/rclauses.html . |
