Thursday, September 27, 2007

Updates, Personal and Linguistic

Since mid-August, we've been wrapped up in pre-moving, moving, and post-moving activities. I think things are starting to settle down and I can pick up where I left off. I'd been working on a Babel Text translation. Actually, I'd been doing two versions simultaneously, trying out two different styles.

An excerpt-- the first verse:
1. And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
a. Anda teliya emas pa ya ianenat shen wa ebi def jenen shen em telam.
there-was language one in the waters-dat. all and 3rd-pl-past(have) have people all one speech-acc.

b. Bi def ya ianea shen em teliyam wa em telam.
3rd-s.-past(have) have the world all one language-acc. and one speech-acc.


In practice, my nouns aren't working out the way I'd hoped. The plural accusative of veci is vecinam, for instance. Yuck. Veci is just right, but once the rest gets tacked on... Yuck. Just... ewwww.

Compare (a.) above to the same version with case markings stripped out:
a2. Anda teliya emas pa ya ianen shen wa ebi def jenen shen em tel.

I don't know if that's better. I think I may be a little iffy on the -n plural as well. Bah. I'll have to push it around until I am happy. I just hope I don't fix it til it breaks completely.