More Elkar?l translation

[Ihano]

To my great surprise, I found an actual specimen of Earthly literature (well, sort of) that can be translated into Elkar?l. I've got everything done, except for one stumbling block: I can't find any way to express speed in the language!

This seems to be to be something well-suited to variability, where X?X would be "fast", XuX "slow" (maybe the other way around) and XiXa "speed". Is this correct?

One other thing that popped up. Suppose you have two anaphora, A and U, already assigned. What if you have an action done by both of these? '-atut'? Or can you separate them and use p- somehow?

Oh, and thanks very much for taking the time to assign names to all those animals -- it was a big help.

[zompist]

This seems to be to be something well-suited to variability, where X?X would be "fast", XuX "slow" (maybe the other way around) and XiXa "speed". Is this correct?

Indeed. OK, here you go: d?p fast ... dup flow. I look forward to the translation!

One other thing that popped up. Suppose you have two anaphora, A and U, already assigned. What if you have an action done by both of these? '-atut'? Or can you separate them and use p- somehow?

The easiest way would be a conjunction: e.g. daqat p-daqut 'A left and U left'. Or daq rij?j 'both of them left'.

[Ihano]

Okay, here we go. This is Ode 41 of the Shijing, the Chinese Book of Songs. Its common title is "The North Wind." I've used object anaphora without assigning them, because the situation was meant to be intimate (probably assignment would be done beforehand), and we have no names on which to assign anyway; I think readers could easily gloss in from the context which is "I" and which is "you."


Khend bur shikh d?l-met.
T?kh shun phil.
Jundat b-jarthat gg?n-ban dda
xirat xibut phishd rij?j li raput add.
Xilat thaq p-dup
???m dda put d??p add!

Khend pekhsh shikh d?l-met.
T?kh d?p phil.
Jundat b-jarthat gg?n-ban dda
xirat xibut phishd rij?j li raput add.
Xilat thaq p-dup
???m dda put d??p add!

Mush t?t-phim khila lem?j pir.
Mush t?t-phim muqha lem?j nkar.
Jundat b-jarthat gg?n-ban dda
xirat xibut phishd rij?j li raput add.
Xilat thaq p-dup
???m dda put d??p add!



Blow coldly wind north.
Fall heavily snow.
Kind-A and love-A then
grasp-A hand-of-U escape both request-U.
Walk-A shyly and slowly
Neeed to go quiickly!

Blow angrily wind north.
Fall quickly snow.
(refrain)

Greater nothing redness compare fox.
Greater nothing blackness compare crow.
(refrain)


Cold is the north wind,
the snow falls thick.
If you are kind and love me
take my hand and we?ll go together.
You are modest, you are slow,
but oh, we must hurry!

Fierce is the north wind,
the snow falls fast.
If you are kind and love me
take my hand and we?ll go together.
You are modest, you are slow,
but oh, we must hurry!

Nothing redder than the fox,
Nothing blacker than the crow.
If you are kind and love me
take my hand and we?ll go together.
You are modest, you are slow,
but oh, we must hurry!

---

I really enjoy translating Elkar?l, at least when I have good material to do...

[Iscun]

You people are fast. Is there any language that can challenge you?

[zompist]

Very impressive! The only correction I'd make is in the comparisons:

Mush t?t-phim khila lem?j t?n-pir.
Mush t?t-phim muqha lem?j t?n-nkar.

I'm not understanding these two lines, though... where do the fox and crow come from?

Are you Ihano Es?rho...?

[Ihano]

I'm not understanding these two lines, though... where do the fox and crow come from?

To be frank, I don't understand them either. But after all, this is, I think, from the Western Zhou period, over three thousand years old, and a folk song -- on a somewhat similar level of ancientness with those Sumerian texts in Snow Crash -- only partially cleaned up by someone back then who could write. To me, it somehow adds to the ominousness, but who knows.

Yeah, that's me, John Minot. These days I tend to go by Minivet or sometimes Tsuyoshi. (I had to strive a bit to remember that Verdurian name, "My-Not," the formula I use to name myself in a language when nothing else pops up. Never used it that much, so I didn't get attached to it.)