Benturi wrote:
zobye “leave.AG” (bye alone also means “leave”)
Yeah, previously, the
zo was necessary because
bye meant "source", "starting point" etc, but I decided to make it mean leave.
Old way:
Na i zongwo u bye i mba.
= I walked away from the house.
New way:
Na i zongwo u bye (ya) mba.
... or ...
Na i bye (ya) mba u zongwo.
dyazo “car” (instrument-move.AG - I glossed dya as instrument before; since Wena words tend to have broad semantic scopes, maybe it also means “device, machine, tool, object, thing...”)
Not quite all of those, but yeah ... here are some more
dya words.
We oviza i za dyabwa gwe za dyagu.
= Police officers wear heavy boots and carry weapons.
U dyahye / dyazoni i li zoni do i we hye ye ne ndyi.
= When the plane took off, there were many scared birds.
Dyazoda i gu ya dyazowe.
= A truck crashed into a bus.
Na i ne gudya.
= I've been attacked (with a weapon).
And now a challenge for you:
- Ha wa i nyu dyazyo?
= Do you have a _______?
zongwo “walk” (Is ngwo perhaps "foot"?)
Ze.
Nevwezyo wo i ba ho mye ze dyundwa.
= Your thought is very good but not correct.
U lu hi do nenge Wena i gi hya.
= On this point, Wena is a little bit strange.
Bawe nenge i ne myegi nwa dyi u nedyi e mbe gwe ngye mye nenge Wena i ne gwa dyi.
= Many languages have only one word for both hand and arm but Wena has two words.
We dyi u nedyi e vundi ye ndu do i go mye i ndwa ba hya wi gi.
= Words for the low parts of the body are similar but they're even stranger.
Mwango i ne du ye da.
= The chief has big feet.
Mwango i za du ye da.
= The chief has a lot of power.
Godu zyi dihu i lyu buvwi u zye i yu i zi bwi u lu mwi ye lu vyo (zyi) zwazo.
= The boy's feet are dirty from playing in the mud at the side of the river.
Ngwo i vundi ye zwi vye du amye godu.
=
Ngwo are body parts that are above feet.
Wa i zyu ma i ngwo?
= What do you think
ngwo are?
Benturi wrote:zondi “animal” (Na i ze mu zyu dyi “ndi” e ma.)
You might see it compounded fairly transparently in the examples above.
Good work on the sentence too! The mistake is minor ... the rest of the sentence is correct, which is a feat.!
zwombazo “door” (I’m guessing zwo means “opening, hole”, so: hole-house-move.AG)
zwombavwe “window” (hole-house-see.AG)
Technically,
zwombazo refers to the doorway, not the door itself, which is
nuzwombazo, but yeah, often when we say "door" we mean "doorway" ... like, "walk through the door" definitely isn't telling anyone to move through solid matter.
go.AG might be better than move.AG because the latter suggests the transitive meaning of "move"* ("change the location of something", instead of the intended "change one's location").
Yeah, you're right! I've been glossing it as "move.AG" because that covers both "come" and "go". Since glosses are always with the full translation below, it should be clear that it's the intransitive meaning ... but I guess it's not clear that it's
only the intransitive meaning. I might shift to "go.AG".
I've been glossing a bit in German recently and it's even more frustrating. German verbs of motion annoy the hell out of me. There's no simple way to say
go that isn't also
walk, and "move" as an intransitive is
sich bewegen ...
Even go.AG doesn't feel quite right to me (can one call the "goer" an agent?)
Sure. It might not always be an agent in the language of thematic role, but what else does the "-er" in "goer" signify? I considered putting "-er" in my glosses ...
zo =
mover,
mo =
eater but it gets very awkward in some places.
Ceaser to indicate the noun that corresponds to the cessative aspect?
Lacker?
In this line, is Wana i he zo ya mbagyozo possible?
Yes, but strange and the
ya would usually be left out. It's kind of like being a cinema's goer.
Zo usually just stands in apposition with the destination, but
ya is also not incorrect there. There are a lot of cases where appositional or genitive modifiers could be used without much change in meaning. There are some other situations where there's a bigger difference.
Na i bahe wo.
= I need you.
Na i bahe wa.
= I need to be you.
... and there are a lot of cases where apposition doesn't really get the intended meaning clear enough.
*"move something" would be zyezo, right?
Yeah, well, that's at least one way. You could also do this:
De i zi lude do na i zye zyu de i luna.
= It was there,
then I moved it here.
Or even
... do na i zyeluna zyi, which is starting to get weird.
This way doesn't focus on the motion itself like
zyezo does, just the final location.