Styrásh sentences

Anwulf

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Styrásh sentences

« on: 14 May 2006, 03:11:00 »

I suddenly started wondering about a set of sample sentences written in Styrásh and thought I'd try writing some myself. This is what I came up with.

1. maachát só feníl "The cat is sleeping."
2. maachanté sóh fenilín "The cats are sleeping."
3. kyreát só styrós és só fearnó "The elf is waiting in the house."
4. vaiát só feníl só banhirím "The cat sees the dog."
5. styrát só banhír vaianhé ér só feniló "The dog is seen by the cat."
6. reollát só styrós meriním sá styrasí "The boy elf gives the girl elf a flower."

I got maachán "sleep" (1., 2.) from the some vocab lists I'd saved some time ago. I see it's no longer listed.

Is the grammar OK? I'm not sure about formation of the passive in (5.) or the order in (6.) (sá styrasí meriním?)

I don't know how to translate the following.

7. The cat was sleeping.
8. The cat saw the dog.
9. The dog was seen by the cat.
10. The woman who was waiting was reading a book.
11. The woman whom I saw was reading a book.
12. The woman to whom I gave the book was reading it.

(7., 8., 9.) are past tense forms, but the Styrásh grammar only has (finite) present forms or a (non-finite) present/past participle. (10., 11., 12.) are instances of relative pronouns, but I can't find who(m), which, or that in the vocab lists.

So the second question is, How do you translate 7. - 12.?


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Artimidor Federkiel

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Re: Styrásh sentences

« Reply #1 on: 14 May 2006, 09:21:00 »

Hello Anwulf!

Nice to hear from you - unfortunately the time I can devote for language is quite limited as there is a lot to do on various other parts of the site, so this explains the lack of progress here.

The sentences you made basically look correct to me - good to see someone handling Styrásh, who knows what he's doing

The passive form you constructed at 5) could work, it hasn't been defined yet properly on the site, but yes, that's definitely a good possibility.

At 6) I guess the word order could be different, the subject could be at the very end, so that it reads translated "gives to the girl a flower the elven boy". A "to" after "gives" could be added to make it clearer perhaps.

Hmmm... Why "maachán" isn't on the vocabulary list anymore I don't know - but we converted everything into a database system (to allow faster and automated updates, better categorization etc. with the SLE program). By manually adding the words, it could be that this one was forgotten. I'll add it now again, should be up again soon.

7) until 12) definitely require an update on vocabulary and language principles. The problem is really that I need to find a way to write down a step-by-step introduction into Styrásh, about the cultural background of the language, then the grammar and technical stuff, without getting too technical. Various people regularly ask for just that, but my time resources are so restricted - but I plan to start on it as soon as possible, especially now that we have done the old Styrásh font in a brand new, beautiful version (if you don't have that one yet, download it here, remove the old santh1.ttf first in the Fonts folder!). Mina has suggested a good site which also progresses on language explanation step by step (see here, dealing with Japanese), so I'm thinking about heading in that direction and always keep the "Santhariarization" in mind when writing. That means that I plan to do more than just summarizing techical details, but deal with the elven point of view in general.

This is also the problem with the Teltan concepts you posted - they'd need to be woven into a (Santharian) culture and explained to a certain degree that way methinks, to give the greater picture. Currently the language is a seperate entity which is still very technically described, so it's difficult to get that on the site.

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Edited by: Artimidor Federkiel at: 5/13/06 17:22


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Anwulf

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Re: Styrásh sentences

« Reply #2 on: 14 May 2006, 21:45:00 »

I made up the passive on the basis of English and other languages that use be + past participle, but wondered whether you had something like the Latin passive in mind.

Placement of the subject at the end of 6.) stops it from being buried in the sentence.

I didn't know there was a new Styrásh font, but I have it now. It looks really good, too. I must try it with those sentences I created to see what they should look like.

Actually, I have another couple of links that you might find useful to see how languages are explained step-by-step.

www.sola-sole.com/gramat.htm (Catalan)
www.linguasiciliana.org/g...course.htm (Sicilian)


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Bard Judith

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Re: Styrásh sentences

« Reply #3 on: 15 May 2006, 20:40:00 »

Yay!

Anwulf the Proper and Punctilious rejoins us!

(Judith quickly hugs him with a large smile, in case any sting was felt in her affectionate epithet...)

There's lots more words in the Dwarven Database now; I've nearly doubled the size of the Thergerim vocabulary. Alas, my 'explanation' of the language is as crude as ever, and the grammar based pretty directly on my native tongue (which, after teaching ESL for six years, I suspect is one of the least consistent and most irregular on the face of the planet!)

Anyhow, enough of that - welcome back!

(releases Anwulf from her generous hug before he begins turning blue from want of air...) :crazy


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Anwulf

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Re: Styrásh sentences

« Reply #4 on: 15 May 2006, 23:26:00 »

I can breathe again! Oh sweet air!

Hello, Judith. Nice to see you too.

I thought I'd grabbed copies of the Thergerim materials, but those would have been on my old laptop. If I can track down all the info about it on the Santharia site, I'll see whether I can write the same sample sentences in Thergerim.

I've also remembered that I meant to ask Art whether you say

só volís jaelín "The eagle's claws" OR
sáh jaelín (fá) só volís "The claws of the eagle"

or perhaps either is good. I assume that the preposition fá "of" takes a genitive, or might not be necessary since volís is already genitive (i.e., possessive).


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