Conlang Retrofitting Game

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Tmeister
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Conlang Retrofitting Game

Post by Tmeister »

The Chinese Whispers thread has produced an output:
Kepau ileun yna ovøyna nrofuat uyøa srularrau yønrylarrau ruluyønrau rulut kepava oyønru yønrovøyna nrofu tsaiena kepau. Akiapa olarralarralovøyn nrof votsa is yøat isakepau. Tsiena itsin uyøna itsayenøyva yevein nrofu vuvøyna nrofy siena fok ikepau. Kepau ikepau.

Tsilarau itsa uvøn nroat ovøyn nrofuyuvøyn nrovøyn nrofu oyønrytsøyrau is yønrina is uvøyn nrokøpau. Yønryløvat in oyønrøyrau yeyeitsayena ikepavayena atsivevein kau ovøyn nrofuyunrau oyønrau evalarau is oyønruat ovyn nroføyvat ovøyn nrofy.
The original text was:
The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveler came along wrapped in a warm cloak. They agreed that the one who first succeeded in making the traveler take his cloak off should be considered stronger than the other. Then the North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the more he blew the more closely did the traveler fold his cloak around him; and at last the North Wind gave up the attempt. Then the Sun shined out warmly, and immediately the traveler took off his cloak. And so the North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger of the two.
Now, our goal is to create a conlang such that the nonsense text above can be understood as a "translation" of the original text.
Last edited by Tmeister on Fri May 27, 2011 12:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Tmeister
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Re: Conlang Retrofitting Game

Post by Tmeister »

A few proposals:

Sentence-final kepau occurs so often that it should probably be ignored, sort of like Japanese "ne~~~", but in the middle of a sentence, it could serve to demarcate clauses. Thus, the phrase Kepau ikepau is an idiom meaning roughly "So be it" (literally, "When, then", a phrase expressing a consequence, but with all the content words removed). I'm not sure whether this should come right after the deal is made ("It's a deal"), or after the North Wind's attempt ("Alas, oh well"). It depends on how much meaning we can cram in.

Accordingly, the first sentence splits up into two phrases:

Kepau ileun yna ovøyna nrofuat uyøa srularrau yønrylarrau ruluyønrau rulut...
"The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger..."

...kepava oyønru yønrovøyna nrofu tsaiena kepau.
"...when a traveler came along wrapped in a warm cloak."

Also, the phrase srularrau yønrylarrau ruluyønrau rulut has an interesting construction, where each word shares one morpheme with the previous word. Perhaps this is a poetic device in the language.
[url=http://en.wikipedia.org][img]http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/2289/23731694ys5.png[/img][/url]

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Pogostick Man
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Re: Conlang Retrofitting Game

Post by Pogostick Man »

I suggest that "ovøyna" means "Sun" and "nrofu" means "North Wind" (with <at> being an enclitic suffix meaning "and"). These "words", or similar ones, crop up with some regularity throughout the text, but only "nrofu" shows up in the sentence before "kepau ikepau" (the way I see it, the first part of the output "Kepau. . .Kepau ikepau" corresponds to that portion of the text running from the beginning to when the North Wind gave up. This could play into Tmeister's suggestion that "kepau ikepau" is an idiom, though perhaps its meaning/connotation could be altered slightly), and ovøyna, like the Sun, does not.
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