Piat text

Dwo Pitii de Fiatwnwe

Dwo pitii de fiatwnwe,
  Li giann-giann mieso puhio
De fwo de nann de zatchwe.

Dwo pitii de fiatwnwe,
  Moc senutii tasom-som
Zi mim-mim de siabe de.

Dwo pitii de fiatwnwe,
  Siotom fwasii de ranne
Kon dwt de chii de adwe.

A! Roza pizonn-zonn
  Dyc-dyc i fwe-fwe giu,
Ta-ta swpwp i bonn
    Sycby usafia lym.

Mim-mim wma de sop
  Dzoc lupii de det fiu,
Fitti-ti rw i fop
    Mim-mim de dzatro lym.

Piat glossary

a 'ah, oh, alas, how remarkable!'
adwe 'eagle' < German _Adler_
bonn 'bring, carry, bear'
bonn sycby 'recall, remember'
chii '(finger)nail, claw'
de 'of, marks end of relative clause'
det 'give'
dwo 'fall (verb)'
dwt 'mouth'
dyc 'boy'
dzatro 'death'
dzoc 'the Sun'
fiatwnwe 'season'
fitti 'flower'
fiu 'life'
fop 'hide'
fwasii 'mercy, pity'
fwe 'girl'
fwo 'be old'
giu 'play (verb)'
i 'and, but, so that (general conjunction)'
kon 'bird'
ligiann 'bear (noun)'
lupii 'happens, occurs'
lym 'house, home, nest'
mieso 'catch'
mim 'I, me'
moc 'dirt, earth, soil'
nann 'be young'
pitii 'leaf'
pizonn 'world'
puhio 'be ill' (imitative)
ranne 'hunt (verb)'
roza 'all, the whole of'
rw 'increase, grow (in number)'
senutii 'grow, develop (of living things)'
siabe 'food'
siotom 'lack, be without'
sop 'dance'
swpwp 'make, create, build, cause to be'
sycby 'soul, mind, personality'
ta 'he, she'
tasom 'plant'
usafia 'winter'
wma 'now, at present'
zatchwe 'animal' < zat 'beast' + chwe 'bird'
zi 'is (copula)'

Piat grammar notes

Piat is an SVO and isolating language. Most constructions are paractactic: the language favors "and ... and ... and ..." rather than subordinating conjunctions like "so that" or "because" or "therefore", and allows these "logical" semantics to be filled in by context.

Relative clauses are important, however: they appear before the noun (or sometimes the verb) and are suffixed by the particle "de" (which I stole from Chinese). This is also used between nouns to indicate possession: "A de B" means "A's B" or "the B of A".

Nouns are made plural by reduplication; a two-syllable noun reduplicates only the second syllable.

The detailed phonology can be found in the conlang archives at http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9907C&L=conlang&P=R470. The only significant points for the prosody is that -ii is just /i/, since -i marks final palatalization (not used in this text, as it happens), and that w and y are both vowels (though i and w are also palatalization and labialization markers respectively).

The first three stanzas use 7-syllable lines, the last two use 6-syllable lines. Stress is not significant, but the patterns of rhyme are.

Smooth English translation

And here's the smooth (but prose) translation:

In leaf-falling season,
  Bears catch sick
And old and young animals.

In leaf-falling season,
  The dirt grows plants
Which are our food.

In leaf-falling season,
  The merciless hunt
of the eagle's beak and claw.

In all the worlds
  boys and girls play;
They make us think of
  The winter home.

Now we dance,
  So that the sun gives life;
The flowers grow and hide
  Our graves.