CoradMo corad u tanaj keqqi tse waretsu cere.
Mo corad u kcaro baw ximmee tabis ny tile.
Kot corad u swen corge, joq u tas praste kat.
Krize i galinae kosh zun fende roj tse nok corad.
Dajpel ny tile ovamwe blize vojdade, a kelle bolan e a ez.
Note: In verb glosses "+" represents an object in the objective case, while "*" stands for a predicative case object.|a| conj. "and"
|baw| pron. predicative form of the relative pronoun "who, which"
|bis-| v. "can, be able to"
|blize| adv. "then, when... (relative)"
|bolna| n. "sun"
|cere-| v. "steal * from +, rob +"
|corad| n. "summer"
|corge| n. "cruel, mean, violent; thug"
|daj-| aff. "re-..., continue ...ing"
|e| pron. non-sentient 3rd person personal pronoun, objective case
|ez| pron. 1st person personal pronoun, objective case
|fajd-| v. "dance [with *, for +]"
|fende| n. irregular active participle of |fajd-|
|galina| n. "happiness, joy, fun"
|i| prep. objective case marker
|joq| conj. "but, however"
|kat| n. "hard, unyielding"
|kcaro| n. "rock (formation), large boulder, cliff"
|kella-| v. "look at, watch, observe, scrutinize"
|keqqi| adj. "poor, miserable, neglected, degenerate"
|kosh| prep. "of (possessive), belonging to"
|kot-| v. "have *, possess +; hold + *, find + *"
|kri-| v. "feel, experience [+ as *], sense +" CAUTION! Although the stem ends in a vowel, it behaves like a consonantic verb.
|mo-| v. "be"
|nok-| v. "go to +; go to do *; happen, take place"
|ny| pron. categorical quantifier, e.g. |ny warve| "dogs in general"
|ovamwe| adv. "with hope, hopefully, optimistically"
|pal-| v. "grow; become *, turn into *"
|praste| n. "claw, talon"
|roj| prep. "through; across; during, while"
|swen| n. "beak; hook, fishhook"
|ta-| aff. "not, un-, non-"
|tas| pron. "zero, none, no; nobody"
|tanaj| n. "outsider, outcast, homeless"
|tile| n. "plant, vegetation"
|tse| conj. generic subordinate clause marker, useful for relative clauses
|u| prep. predicative case marker
|vojda-| v. "crush, trample; extinguish; eliminate"
|waretsu| n. "puppy"
|ximme-| v. "settle [into *], colonize *; grow roots"
|zun| n. "child"
This is a really skeletal compactification of Obrenje grammar... if you have the time and leisure, check out the grammar webpage athttp://www.cinga.ch/langmaking/obrenje_index.htm - The most basic word order is VSO(O). The verb usually comes first, then the subject, then the object(s).
- The subject is unmarked, while the objects are tagged with prepositions. Even the grammatical object cases of Obrenje (predicative, objective) are marked with prepositions: |i| for objective and |u| for predicative. Only personal pronouns can exhibit through inflected forms rather than prepositions.
- Sometimes an object is placed *before* the verb in the sentence: OVS(O). In this situation, an unmarked object (no preposition) is taken to be in the predicative case. In other words, if you place the predicative object before the verb, you can drop the preposition |u|. Even though unmarked, it cannot be confounded with the subject, since that must always come *after* the verb. Example: |Tog ny warve u sawne| and |Sawne tog ny warve| both mean the same, "dogs in general eat meat (|sawne|)".
- For the roles of the two unconventional cases "predicative" and "objective", please consult http://www.cinga.ch/langmaking/obrenje_nouns.htm#2. It's explained in few words and some pictures. =P
- There is no special construction for modal verbs. They are simply verbs which take the gerunds of other verbs as predicative objects: |Moze u torva| "I am a grown man", |Kwoze u moa u torva| "I want being a grown man" = "I want to be a grown man". The OVS syntax mentioned above is often employed here for its brevity: |Kwoze u moa u torva| means the same thing as |Torva moa kwoze|.
- For verb conjugations, check out the following page (especially the tables): http://www.cinga.ch/langmaking/obrenje_verbs.htm. Don't despair, you'll only need a few of all those verb forms. ;-)
- In case you wonder why there are always two 3rd person forms for verbs... 3e stands for "3rd person, explicit subject" and 3i for "3rd person, implicit subject". You use the 3i form when the subject is not explicitly mentioned in this sentence, but appeared in an earlier sentence. It replaces the 3rd person subject pronouns of English. Compare: |Lonne tin| "a man sings" versus |Lonna| "he sings".
- Note that there are two conjugation tables, one for vocalic verbs (whose stems end in a vowel, e.g. |lonna-|) and one for consonantic verbs (e.g. |jor-|). Also, a verb's last vowel will shift in the past and future tenses! |Jor| means "travels", but |jur| is "traveled" and |jer| "will travel".
- Nouns do not inflect for number (singular/plural), but they do inflect for definiteness... for example, |tin| means "man, men" while |tine| means "the man, the men". The inflection rules are quite simple: http://www.cinga.ch/langmaking/obrenje_nouns.htm#1
SummerSummer is a beggar[1] who steals puppies [2].
Summer is a rock upon which plants cannot grow.
Summer has [3] a brutal beak, but [4] no hard claws.
We feel the joy of a dancing child while it is summer.
Plants will regrow with hope [5] when they are trampled, and the sun watches them and me.Notes
[1] Obrenaja is an extremely social state, and isn't really familiar with individual beggars (welfare is afforded to communes, not individual people). I decided to describe it as a "poor outsider", where an outsider is a person banned from its original commune, who hasn't been accepted into a new commune. It usually implies a horrible crime in the person's past, and calling someone |naj ur tas naja|, "member of no society", is equivalent to "son of a b****". But hey, don't blame me, I'm just translating...
[2] I assumed in Summer's favor that the beggar steals puppies rather than children, which would have been a viable translation option too...
[3] The source text suggested "is" rather than "has", but does that make sense? Do you compare something with "claws"? Probably not. The Obrenaj certainly don't think so. ;-)
[4] I replaced "and" with "but", since it appears to make much more sense in this juxtaposition.
[5] That was a tricky one. The source text basically heaped the concepts of "begin", "future" and "hope" into the sentence, leaving it to me to piece them together into something meaningful. Do the plants begin to grow, only to be trampled, or do they regrow after being trampled? I went for the somewhat less cruel latter version. So sue me. =P