Post iBnyANQQW6q

Severin Zahler Jun 29, 2016 (10:42)

Just working on a translation for someone into both Quenya and Sindarin of the following sentence:

"If you want to be hard (i.e. "steadfast, enduring"), you always have to be hard"

While Quenya is not too much of a problem (got Que merityë nata voronwa, mauya tyë nata voronwa illumë) Sindarin does give me some headaches, and that mainly is regarding some forms of the copula verb +#na- "to be".

The scaffold of my translation looks like this:

Ae anírag no? (infinitive) vronadui, boe achen nad (gerund) vronadui an uireb.

While by applying the regular rules for A-verbs you do get "valid" words, no and nad, I'm just a tad sceptical whether these work out, mainly as I could not find any place where the forms of this usually irregular verb have been already guessed (of all the verb conjugation tables I found it was omitted entirely), as well as nad (gerund of na- could be confused with nad ("thing").

Also does the rule that direct objects are lenited also affect adjectives in copula sentences? (bronadui --> vronadui)

Thanks for any clues on this one!

Tamas Ferencz Jun 29, 2016 (11:45)

Where do you get the form *nata from?

mauya as a modal verb governs a dative in my opinion (mauya tyen)

Lőrinczi Gábor Jun 29, 2016 (12:06)

Well, you can almost always avoid such unpleasant situations if you try to rephrase your sentence, e.g., *cî nidhig mabed darias, boe le ui raithad a tharias (this could be the slogan of a potency pill :D).

Btw, I don't think that bronadui in your sentence should be lenited.

Ekin Gören Jun 29, 2016 (13:11)

Perhaps we can use ola-, at least for the first half. I see no option nor reason to avoid na- in the last part. Homophones are ever-present in Sindarin, we cannot change that.
Pí anírol vronadui olad, illû bórol chim nad.
"If you want to become enduring, you always need to be enduring."

Severin Zahler Jun 29, 2016 (13:14)

+Tamas Ferencz I usually draw back on Thorsten Renk's Grammar courses, where he also features this extended infinitive which fits very well where you have an infinitive with "to" to translate. Also found that form in some other courses, could not name a primary source though off my head.

I actually did search for some indications whether mauya- requests a certain case, did not find something for certain, and then just used Renk's elaborations on the passive in Quenya (translating "you are compelled"). Renk basically describes this rendition of the passive as a translation of literal "*it* compels you" where the it is implied and thus the "you" is in accusative and not dative. But I definitely considered a construction similar to known Q. óla tyen.

+Lőrinczi Gábor Wow thats a fancy way to rephrase this sentence :O But to my taste its a bit too far away from the original wording, and not preferrable if there's a more or less safe way to do it otherwise :S

Severin Zahler Jun 29, 2016 (13:18)

Can ui be used as standalone word? Only knew it as prefix so far. I love +Ekin Gören's illû, a lot better than the bulky and too often used an uireb :P

What's that ola- you're speaking off? Haven't heard of that word as of yet starts researching

Ekin Gören Jun 29, 2016 (13:26)

+Severin Zahler Using "ui" adv. would do the trick as well but "an uireb", not at all. Since it's "for eternal", rather than "for eternity" (which would be an uir). For ola-, PE22/134.2610

Severin Zahler Jun 29, 2016 (13:33)

Yeah agree that an uireb was far off optimal, although I think it would have worked as no other safe solution jumped to my head right then.
Could have guessed that ola- is from almighty PE22 :D Did read it twice and am chipping in more and more bits from it into my translations, but am still far off knowing about all of them^^

Lőrinczi Gábor Jun 29, 2016 (17:41)

You can also avoid the using of the gerundium of na- if you change the second part to an imperative clause, e.g., no ui tarch ("be always tough") or just no *uidarch ("be ever-tough", cf. uidafnen).

Tamas Ferencz Jun 29, 2016 (18:02)

+Severin Zahler if I am not mistaken the only source for the extended infinitive are the sentences with karita in VT42 (see them listed in the references on http://eldamo.org/content/words/word-2562596025.html) but I personally don't feel that's sufficient to make it into a universal case, especially as we also have sentences in the same essay using the simple infinitive kare in the same position.

Andre Polykanine Jun 29, 2016 (20:23)

I saw somewhere the infinitive from ná to be náve. +Tamas Ferencz ?

Andre Polykanine Jun 29, 2016 (20:23)

Oh, I mean in Quenya, of course.

Tamas Ferencz Jun 29, 2016 (22:22)

+Andre Polykanine náve is indeed attested, but it rather looks like an abstract noun to me: http://eldamo.org/content/words/word-3259716995.html

Severin Zahler Jun 30, 2016 (11:10)

Thanks a ton for all the inputs! Here's what I'll go with:

Q.: Qui merityë na voronwa, mauya tyë na voronwa illumë.
S.: Cí nidhig bronadui nad, boe achen illû bronadui nad.

Regarding the word for "if" in Sindarin: Both the variants and ae are neologisms created by David Salo for the LotR and Hobbit movies, going back to Q. resp. ai. The qui I am using comes from LVS11 (PE22/158:1605), previously I used quë << qe from QVS (PE22/120:1810). LVS11 is the newer source (1969) over QVS (1948-1950), hence my choice. To choose between ae and for Sindarin I do refer to QVS though which has both Q. ai and qe while qe is for "if" and ai is for "maybe, supposing" which definitely fits less well.
Now LVS11 has both qui "if" and "may be", and David Salo's NS. is said to be derived from rather than qui, but given that PE22 was not released when this derivation was created I think I can safely reconnect to qui rather than ...

Again thx for sharing your thoughts!

Ekin Gören Jun 30, 2016 (11:57)

+Severin Zahler My approach to the matter:
Quenya: KW>qu | quetta / qui
Sindarin: KW>p | peth / pí