Relay 10/R

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Lexicon

General note: unless complex unguessable derivation, nouns will be given here in the singular, and adjectives in the singular masculine. Derived adverbs won’t be given, only the adjective they derive from. Verbs will be listed in the infinitive, but the forms appearing in the text will be given in their descriptions. Words that have already been translated in the previous section are not repeated here.

Disclaimer

Due to lack of time for checking, there may still be spelling mistakes, both in the Narbonese text and the rest of this document. However, the grammatical and lexical descriptions I gave are definitely correct, and should thus be what you must trust, if you find apparently contradictory things (you shouldn’t, but one never knows. . . ).
In any case, don’t hesitate to contact me if you have problems.

Attenceam, petin mâou !

Pronunciation (IPA)

Notes on the English translation

First, a disclaimer: this is not my best translation ever (I mean from Narbonese to English). But it does the job and doesn’t look downright alien, while staying close to the original text.

Then, a small cultural note: the title of the text is chosen as a pun reminding people of “beware of dog” signs. This is because the Narbonese title does just that too. But actually, “beware of dog” signs in Francie and Gaulhe (just like in France here) don’t say this anymore. They used to say “attention, chien méchant”, or in Narbonese “attenceam, cam mâou”, but people kept complaining (with some reason) that if the dog was really that naughty, it shouldn’t be allowed roaming freely in a garden, from which it could potentially escape. So today the usual signs are “attention au chien” and “attenceam ae cam”. However, in this case I felt using the old version made better sense, and made the pun nicer, despite the fact that the Limciela text gave a title closer to the newer version. It fits better in the culture, and I would have done the same had the translation to be done in French.

Finally, another cultural note, about the Narbonese word “linde”. This word means “good-looking girl, young woman” and is an obvious borrowing from Spanish “linda”, with the difference that it is only used as noun in Narbonese. This word illustrates perfectly the peculiarities of the evolution of the Narbonese lexicon. This word originally appeared in poems and songs of a single “trouvour” (a modern version of the troubadour, one of the main artistic occupations among the Gaulhóscs). It was found nice enough to be adopted by other trouvours, and eventually found its way into the common spoken and written language. Unlike French which is controlled by a centralising power, the French Academy, which most people ignore most of the time, leading to innovations in lexicon coming usually from the people on the street themselves and having to fight their way up to ever appear in a dictionary, in Narbonese innovations (both lexical and grammatical) come usually from the trouvours, the “poets”, who form a sort of decentralised Academy, without official sanction, but very effective (attending poetry recitals in Gaulhe is as common as going to the cinema here). As a result, innovations often end up in the common spoken language last rather than appearing there (the spoken language is also a source of innovations, but word-play and neologism-making is what trouvours mostly do, which is what separates them from poets and singers in other countries and cultures. It means that a single trouvour invents new words all the time, usually at least one or two per song or poem. Most are quickly forgotten, but out of all this there are always a few that stick out and come and enrich the vocabulary of everyone). Since innovations are mostly individual rather than group inventions, it explains the numerous quirks in the Narbonese lexicon, and the strange paths semantic shifts have often taken in this language.

Grammatical notes

Narbonese (“Narbonósc” /narbo"nos/ in the language) is a rather run-of-the-mill Romance language when it comes to grammar. Most of its grammatical features can be found in French, Spanish and Portuguese too. Its peculiarities are more to find in the vocabulary. For this reason, this section will be rather short.

Narbonese features

• Two genders: masculine and feminine. As in French, gender is not always deductible from the form of the word, although words ending in -e are more often than not feminine.
• Two numbers: singular and plural. Plurals can be marked by an ending -s, -es, -x or -z, generally. However, those endings are usually not pronounced, unless phenomenon of liaison.
• Adjectival agreement: adjectives agree in gender and number with the noun they complete. They usually follow the noun they complete, but sometimes precede it, especially when they describe a typical characteristic of the noun.
• Adverbs derived from adjectives formed by adding -mente to the feminine form of the adjective: there is another construction adding -é to the root, but you won’t see it in this text.
• Articles: as in French, nouns hardly ever appear without article. Narbonese has full sets of indefinite and definite articles, as well as partitive articles that don’t appear in this text and thus will be left alone. See Table 1 for a list of those articles.
• Merging of articles and prepositions: this phenomenon, which appears to various degrees in various Romance tongues, is particularly strong in Narbonese. Both the indefinite and definite articles merge with the prepositions â (to), de (of, from), em (at), im (in, into), com (with) and pêre (by, in, on, through). Check Table 2 for a list of those mergings (check it carefully: the text is full of them).
• Personal pronouns and adjectives: Narbonese has full sets of subject, direct object, indirect object, emphatic and possessive pronouns, as well as possessive adjectives (which agree in gender and number with the noun they complete). They are pretty similar to the French pronominal system. They also merge with prepositions (making Narbonese a Romance tongue with “conjugated” prepositions), but fortunately only with the same prepositions as with the articles (see Table 2 for the list). Note that unlike French, verbs aren’t often accompanied with a subject pronoun. However, strangely enough you cannot just omit the subject pronoun when you want to make an impersonal construction (i.e. a construction where the verb has no true subject, like for verbs like plouvîre: to rain). For those constructions, you are obliged to use the pronoun ste (st’ before vowels) as placeholder for the subject (giving thus ste pleuvet: it rains). An absent subject always marks a personal subject. See Table 3 for the personal pronouns and Table 4 for the possessive adjectives (they contain all you need).
• Verbs: The Narbonese verbal system is pretty similar to the one in every Western Romance language: four definite moods (indicative, subjunctive, conditional, imperative), four simple tenses (present, imperfect, simple past, future), and the usual corresponding compound tenses formed with the auxiliary avôre (to have) with the past participle of the verb, as well as the possible passive voice formed with stêre (to be) with the past participle. Note though that Narbonese features a subjunctive future (but then Portuguese has it too), which can be used in main clauses to indicate potentiality (it can mean “maybe”, but also indicate a possible future action—rather than a certain future action— and as such is usually translated by a conditional). Tense and mood use is otherwise pretty similar to what can be found in Portuguese and Spanish. Of course, verbs also feature the usual impersonal forms: infinitive, present and past participle, and the gerund. In this text though, you’ll meet only a few infinitives and past participles.
• Verbal negation: As in French, the negation in Narbonese is discontinuous, formed with the unstressed ne (n’ in front of a vowel) in front of the verb, and a second, stressed, word after it. But unlike in French, the second word is variable, depending on the meaning of the verb. The default term is reim, but verbs of movement commonly use pas, verbs of speech use palavre, and verbs indicating will, ability, possibility, desire, etc. . . often use cas.
• Written accents: as you probably have noticed, Narbonese uses a wealth of written accents: besides the acute, grave and circumflex accent, it uses also the tilde and the trema, and you’re lucky enough to receive a text where all those accents are represented! You needn’t know why they are there: accents only give pronunciation indications. The thing you need to know, however, is that except in some commonly used words (mainly prepositions), the grave and circumflex accents indicate the same thing, but the grave accent is used on the last (written) syllable of the word, while the circumflex is used otherwise. So if a noun, adjective or verb has a grave accent on its last syllable and through some grammatical feature, something is added (like the feminine su_x -e) that adds a new syllable at the end, the grave accent must become a circumflex accent. For instance: avèv: I had, avêvams: we had.

Table 1: Narbonese articles

Indefinite articles	singular	plural
masculine	um	uns
feminine	une	unes

Definite articles	singular	plural
masculine	e (l’ before vowel)	ès
feminine	a (l’ before vowel)	as
neuter	o (l’ before vowel)

Table 2: Mergings of articles and pronouns with prepositions

Articles	â	de	em, im	com	pêre
e	ae	dé	ne	coe	epêre
a	ai	da	na	coa	apêre
o	au	do	no	co	opêre
l’	al’	del’	nel’	col’	pêl’
ès	ais	dès	nès	coes	èpêres
as	ais	das	nas	coas	apêres
um	aum	dum	num	coem	umpêre
une	aune	dune	nune	coene	umpêre
ums	aums	dums	nums	coems	umpêres
unes	aunes	dunes	nunes	coenes	umpêres

Pronouns	â	de	em, im	com	pêre
mei	ame	dême	nême	mecom	mepêre
tei	ate	dête	nête	tecom	tepêre
lui	â lui	de lui	nelui	lecom	lepêre
lei	â lei	de lei	nelei	lacom	lapêre
nós	anes	dênes	nênes	nocom	nopêre
vós	aves	dêves	nêves	vocom	vopêre
lorr	â lorr	de lorr	nelorr	locom	lopêre
sei	asse	desse	nesse	secom	sepêre

Table 3: Narbonese personal pronouns

	subject	direct object	indirect object	emphatic
1st singular	iou	me (m’ before vowel)	mi (m’ before vowel)	mei
2nd singular	tu	te (t’ before vowel)	ti (t’ before vowel)	tei
3rd sing. masc.	ile	le (l’ before vowel)	li (l’ before vowel)	lui
3rd sing. fem.	êle	la (l’ before vowel)	li (l’ before vowel)	lei
3rd sing. neuter		lo (l’ before vowel)	li (l’ before vowel)	sei
1st plural	nos	nos	noi	nós
2nd plural	vos	vos	voi	vós
3rd pl. masc.	iles	lès	lorr	lorr
3rd pl. fem.	êles	las	lorr	lorr
3rd reflexive		se (s’ before vowel)	si (s’ before vowel)	sei

Table 4: Narbonese possessive adjectives

	sing. masc.	sing. fem.	pl. masc.	pl. fem.
1st sing.	meu	ma	mès	mas
2nd sing.	to	ta	tous	tas
3rd sing.	so	sa	sous	sas
1st pl.	nouêtre	nouêtre	nouès	nouès
2nd pl.	vouêtre	vouêtre	vouès	vouès
3rd pl.	lorr	lorr	lorrs	lorrs