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Previous (Jovian) Next (Uchunata) Vocabularya (vocative)
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Gwardd-ti di lla ffuid"O'ew Dew! Ke gos es-sa wenid di gi? "Yr, lla wer es gwenid a nustr gas, o ffuin iewen, di onc ffagewth a warddar-gw di llo ffuid! Sa h-erant ffaeth di lla irein di lla ffad fedissif: lla ffuid sui yst deleithan di ganhar llo chanhiwn, e sig inawant. Mai llâ sa fedissif er asselid, iewolad e ddewerad, abuis a'll ffin llo rhibrofad h-erant iaeth di llo ffenestr." "A, ke gos es-sa wenid? Ffagewth a ddiger, ke gos es-sa wenid?" "Gwerdad eo sab rhen. E di onc llo nustr llingw thosant ia agur, per se lla gos serew ystad manugad di'll pyblig, afrew ystad ffeig contr mulltisaf di'll pobl ineiddad a lla intrroadiwn." Beware of the babyO my God! What happened here? Yesterday, the war had come to our house, o young lady, therefore would you beware of the babies! They are made of the irony of fate itself: the baby was delighting itself by singing the songs, and so on. But then they themselves were attacked, their throats cut and devoured, until at last the refuted things were thrown out the windows. O, what came? Would you tell, what came? Indeed I do not know. And therefore our tongues are silent already now, for if the thing had been eaten in public, had been facing against a great lot of people bored to the interrogation. (What the last paragraph means is anyone's guess. I'm sure it is significant in context :) ) Some notes on grammarMutations Initial mutations are productive in Brithenig. They occur in feminine noun phrases, after some parts of speech (above after o, ke, di, a and e), in questions where the order of words are inverted; and in plural noun phrases and verbs. The first type is soft mutation, and the second is aspirant mutation, which indicates the plural. Examples of the soft mutation above cause d > dd /D/, c > g, g > 0, and m > f /v/. Examples of the aspirant mutation cause c /k/ > ch /x/, and 0 (vowel initial) > h. Nouns While the noun still has number and grammatical gender, normally it is not indicated by any inflections of the noun. This role has been taken over by the article ill (masculine), lla (feminine) and llo (plural). Adjectives follow after the noun. Verbs Verbs are inflected for person and number. The verb endings in the modern language are reduced in form. The singular verb uses the 0-ending; the second plural the ending -th; and the first and third plural verb the ending -n or -nt, both of which are pronounced the same. In the above text tense varies between present tense (es, yst, t(h)osant); past tense (er, erant from ERA past tense of ESSE) and the conditional tense with the affix -ew-. Note that the 2nd pl. conditional of FACERE is used as a polite command form. The past particle ends in -d. In the above text it is used with the present and past tenses of ESSE as the perfect tense. The past particles of FACERE and JACERE are irregular and listed below. The present participle is made with the ending -n. It is used in the text above with STARE to form a continuous tense. The past participle of STARE is used as the past participle for ESSE. The title is a reference to a common warning sign. (So I am told) |
© Jan van Steenbergen, Andrew Smith, 20 Aug. 2004