Ikanirae Seru

by Estel Telcontar

The Text

ekaiti se uomo yarai ha metani a
ikeyumora ha seru kenie a yarai ha tamoka ireora tu reona a yuti ha enai a keko arai ha heko sikoku yuti a nara isikokura ha enai one yuti a nara neko arai ha seru esa ma keyumora a "otu seru ma yuti ikesita se yuti mosa metani iroha o uomo yarai ha metani koimu yuti enai a" ara keyumora ha seru esa a ataya tiyo nona metani ro yuti teteki a nara uomo yarai ha nesatu okosa a ara keyumora ha nesa metani teteki a

English translation:

The time that evil people prayed.
The teachers told this story.  People believed the words to be holy. We hid.  No one could protect us.  So the protectors hid with us.  So someone said this to a teacher: “Tell us the things that we should pray!  Evil people have prayed to see us hide.”  But the teacher said this: “god already hears all your prayers.”  So the evil people became angry.  But the teacher had already begun praying.

Grammar

Syntax

Word order is strictly SVO.  Every sentence ends with a “sentence-type marker”; the only two such markers in this text are “a” which marks statements, and “o” which marks requests and commands.  Since these are sufficient to determine the end of a sentence, sentence-final punctuation is usually not used, and capital letters are also not used.  Subjects are not omitted in requests and commands.

Inflections 

The only inflection is pluralization of nouns and pronouns, which is entirely regular: “y-“ is prefixed before vowels, and “i-“ is prefixed before consonants.

Vocabulary

a               statement marker (spoken period)
ara             but
arai            person
ataya   god
enai            hide
ekaiti  time
esa             this
ha              past tense marker (“did”)
heko            can, be able to
keko            no, none, not any
kenie   story
kesita  thing (non-physical; not “object”)
keyumo  teach
koimu   see
ma              to
metani  pray, praying, prayer
mosa            should
nara            so, therefore
neko            some
nesa            begin
nesatu  become
nona            all
o               request/command marker
okosa   angry
one             with
otu             2nd person pronoun (you) (singular)
-ra             -er (person who does X)
reona   holy
reora   word
ro              of
roha            3rd person nonliving pronoun (it)
se              relative marker (“that”)
seru            speak, talk, say
sikoku  protect
tamoka  believe
teteki  already
tiyo            hear
uomo            evil
uti             1st person pronoun (I) (singular)