McGuffey's First Translation Exercise.

[Miatato]

Gary Shannon about creating a language on the fly, going through his adaptation of McGuffey's First Reader (). I thought that perhaps this might be something we could look at also.

Here's the first bit:

[1] I see a boy.
[2] I see a girl.
[3] I see a boy and a girl.
[4] The boy can see the girl.
[5] I can see the girl and the boy.
[6] I can see the girl.

I guess we'll just have to invent words for boy and girl.
Regarding 4, 5, and 6... Could this be a place for the tu irrealis ()to kick in, with this specific meaning understood from context? (... because it might also be understood as "The boy will probably see the girl.")

[Zwangzug]

[1] ji paki joba
[2] ji paki niba
[3] ji paki joba tei niba

?

[Miatato]

4. Joba tu paki niba.

(Or, joba na paki niba, if we'd like a new potential particle instead of using tu. Personally, I am all about letting the ambiguity in and making my words work for their wages.)

[alexfink]

Can I put in a vote against having distinct words for 'boy' and 'girl'? Especially if done in a way taking jo- to be a masculine element -- you'll recall I had . (Also by way of taking a countering-systemic-biassy stance against dividing the semantic space in the way suggested in our exercises.)

1. ji paki daba pengno.
2. ji paki daba nino.
3. ji paki daba pengno tei daba nino.
4. daba pengno tu paki daba nino.

(Recall the adjvsr -no.)

[Miatato]

So...
6) ji tu paki daba nino tei daba pengno. (or "ji tu paki niba tei joba." )
7) ji tu paki daba nino.

And 'daba' might be the equivalent of 'child' in English, yes?

If anyone else has any discussion or debate to throw into this, don't be shy. It's all good to me, as long as we're using the language. Every new sentence is progress, even if we end up going a different direction.

From a use-by-me point of view, I like that I can use 'daba' where m/f doesn't matter, saving me the trouble of having to come up with the right one. I've had to remind myself that 'nino' isn't 'niño', but that may eventually work in its favor-- a mistake I'm trying not to make can be a memory hook too. ('Joba' and 'niba' also seem relatively easy to remember, though.)

The next set has an illustration (which can be viewed at the link in the first post) that seems to depict an older (teen?) boy and a man running. I don't know if that age thing is important. (It was pretty important when I translated it into Teliya Nevashi, since words that are approximately equivalent to infant, toddler, child, teen, young adult and adult (with masculine and feminine forms) are in common use where English uses 'boy', 'girl', 'man' and 'woman', etc.)

[7] See the man!
[8] See the boy and the man!
[9] The man has a hat.
[10] Has the boy a hat?
[11] The boy can run.
[12] Can the man run?
[13] The man can see the boy run.

This one also has 2 questions, but they are both yes/no questions, so we should be able to handle that... or at least, we should be able to wrestle it out.

[Matthew Turnbull]

(7) See the man!
jizai tu paki kelin pengnol
we (inc) can see the man.

would we can't see the man be jizai vi vo paki kelin pengnol?