A takeke lawaveke iu fupo, iu he'eilili, iu mali, oi iu pikio notu. E takeke i leya poe feikile i uela oku. E takeke iu ke ku'etinivie ua i otu tiva o lutiuvini. Ape ulaya uei i ia ti, "A takenevi ia oi faka ai?" A kamelaye ia heva peka, oie mamaka ie Ilue eli, oia keli falele.
a (part.) indicates that the subject of the sentence is brand new, or different from the previous
ai (adv.) question marker (as an adverb, placed sentence-finally to mark a question)e (part.) indicates that the subject of the sentence is the same as the previous sentence
-e (det.) the singular definite article (idiomatic, in many cases; can be safely ignored, I believe, in translation. Rely on context to figure out what's definite and not. As a suffix, this attaches most commonly to the predicate marker /i/, but also attaches to prepositions)
eli (v.) to love; (n.) love; (adj.) loving; (adv.) lovinglyfaka (n.) the planting season (i.e., the season most suitable for planting)
falele (v.) to be green; (adj.) green; (n.) greenness; greenery, foliage; forest
feiki (v.) to grow; (n.) growth
fupo (v.) to be old; (adj.) old; (n.) an elderly personheva (prep.) over, all over, across, all throughout, throughout, on, upon
he'eilili (v.) to sicken; (n.) sickness, jaundice; (n.) a sick or infirm personi (prep.) predicate marker
ia (pro.) 2nd person, singular pronoun, "you"
Ilue (n.) Darynese deity of planting, the morning, and of birth and the creative spirit (this is a direct borrowing from Darynese: the language of the person who sent their translation to me. I didn't know what to do with this, so I'm passing the buck to you ;)kamelaye (v.) to wander around aimlessly, slowly, not rushing, enjoying the wander
ke (n.) tooth
keli (v.) to trail behind, to leave a trail (e.g., for X to trail behind Y [the latter can be dropped when the thing it's trailing behind is implied or already known])
ku'etinivie (v.) to have/show no remorse for one's actions; (adj.) remorselesslawaveke (n.) the rainy season
-le (suf.) causative marker (attaches to verbs)
leya (n.) stone, rock
lutiuvini (n.) predator (borrowing from Zhyler)mali (n.) child
mamaka (v.) to greet, to welcome; (n.) greeting; (adj.) invitingnotu (v.) to hunt; (adj.) hunting; (n.) (a/the) hunt
o (prep.) genitive preposition (X o Y = Y's X or X of Y. X must be an inherent part of Y)
oi 1 (conj.) conjoins two (or more) NP's or two VP's
oi 2 (prep.) during
oia (contr.) contraction of /oi/ and /a/
oie (contr.) contraction of /oi/ and /e/
oku (adv.) no, not (as an adverb, placed sentence-finally to negate the sentence)
otu (n.) claw (of an animal)-pe (suf.) suffixes to the subject status marker of the sentence, and renders the meaning "therefore", or "and so", "so", etc.
peka (n.) earth, soil, land, country, nation
pikio (n.) caracal (a type of lynx) (borrowed from Zhyler, by means of Sathir, by means of Njaama)
po- (pre.) prefixes to the subject status markers to indicate the beginning of a relative clausetakeke (v.) to be like, to act like, to be similar to; (n.) similarity
takenevi (v.) to be kind, generous; (adj.) kind, generous; (n.) kindness, generosity
ti (prep.) because of (idiomatically precedes a quote)
tiva (v.) to be sharp; (adj.) sharp; (n.) sharpness-u (art.) marks the plural (definite or indefinite), and is suffixed to the predicate marker
ua (conj.) or
uei (pro.) first person, plural, exclusive
uela (n.) moss
ulaya (v.) to askNote: There's lots of fairly opaque derivational morphology going on above. I listed pretty much all the morphologically complex words as their own entries, rather than listing the base forms and the affixes. The only places where I didn't are where the derivation is fairly transparent.
The romanization is very close to X-SAMPA. The only differences are that an apostrophe ' is a glottal stop [?], and a y is a palatal glide [j]. Just some general stuff: Kamakawi VSO, with prepositions, no cases, and the adjective follows the noun. More specific information will be given below, and you can also get info from my website: http://dedalvs.free.fr/kamakawi/main.html.Just a couple quick notes. First, Kamakawi uses a switch-reference system not unlike Hittite. Luckily, there are only two of the markers used here, and they're the two easiest to understand. Basically, the first word of any clause will be a marker which will indicate whether the subject of the sentence is the same as that of the previous sentence, or whether it is different/new. So, of course, the very first marker will always indicate a new subject. The new subject marker is /a/. After the first sentence is through with, and you go on to the next sentence, though, there are two possibilities. If the second sentence begins with /a/, this means that there is a new and different subject from the first sentence. If the sentence begins with /e/, this means that the subject of the second sentence is the same as the subject of the first. If this is the case, the subject will not be specified (in this way, Kamakawi is a kind of pro-drop language).
A second note is about the word order. Kamakawi is VSO, but specifically, it'll be: (1) Subject marker; (2) verb; (3) subject NP; (4) predicate marker or other preposition; (5) object NP (either of the verb or the preposition; (6) other PP's; (7) adverbs. Since there is a lot of zero derivation in Kamakawi, and since adjectives follow the nouns they modify, and since adverbs come sentence finally, it can look, on paper, like a final adverb is actually an adjective modifying the last NP. When spoken, there would be no confusion, since the phrase-level intonation would differ, but in writing, I'll simply say: Be aware of this.
A final note is that there is an obligatory predicate marker /i/ in Kamakawi. It precedes all nominal predicates, unless replaced by another preposition (this happens in one sentence above). When the subject is dropped, the predicate appears before the very first NP. What this means is that while a normal Kamakawi sentence (with a transitive verb) looks like: "A verb X i Y"--a sentence with the same subject marker will look like "E verb i Y". A final note, when a verb has multiple direct objects, the predicate marker /i/ must precede each object.
That should be all the necessary notes that can't be handled by the wordlist to follow. A word of caution: There is one relative clause above. It shouldn't be tough to figure out, but if you're having trouble with it (or identifying it), I have a section on relative clauses on my website at: http://dedalvs.free.fr/kamakawi/rclauses.html.
The rainy season is like the elderly, the sick, children and caracals on the hunt. It is like the rock that cannot grow plants. It is like a predator's remorseless teeth or its sharp claws. Consequently, we ask you, "Are you kind during the planting season?" You wander through the soil, and greet Ilue with love, and greenery trails in your wake.