click to visit larger image The Third Page of the Story of ‘E From the Fenworks |
This follows pages one and two, which have some further explanations.
It’ll probably be a little while before the next couple of pages are done. I have to do a lot of planning for them. They’re tricky. But, these three pieces are going to be displayed in an art show next month, so that’ll be cool!
Translations for Page 3
big letters:
‘uuta shedoreso ‘e ‘inuukepekape
“Therefore, She made a home out of her body.”
small letters (left and right):
fefa ccaruubinojeda nenena fefufo cciruu’enolito neneni
“We know this because we saw it.”
You don’t really have to use that many words in Fenekere to say “We know this because we saw it.” However, I needed to fill the space, and the extra verbiage adds emphasis and clarity. It’s essentially Fenekere legalese. It would stand up in court.
There are all sorts of ways to shorten it. The cleanest would probably be:
fefa binojeda ‘uuni’enoleto nenena
Which is one of my favorite sentence structures.
The difference, demonstrated in English, looks something like this:
1. “We therefore know this because we saw it.”
2. “We know from seeing this.”
Except that the specific meaning of the sentences don’t change as much as they do in English. That’s just a rough depiction of how the grammar compacts. For the linguists and conlangers in my audience, it actually looks like this.
fefa ccaruubinojeda nenena fefufo cciruu'enolito neneni we.SBJ effect-know.V this.OBJ we.ADV cause-saw.V.of.ADV this.OBJ.of.ADV
v.s.
fefa binojeda 'uuni'enoleto nenena we.SBJ know.V because.saw this.OBJ
Adverbs are not strictly adverbs in Fenekere. Sometimes the whole adverb clause acts as an adverb, and the adverb itself becomes a noun that acts as a subject of that clause. So, the first sentence says something akin to “We know this in the way of having seen it,” with the added prefixes for cause and effect thrown in to make things extra explicit.
The second version of the sentence just simply uses two verbs, one in past tense with the “because of” prefix to let you know what caused what.
I like to imagine that this book was created by four of the Ktletaccete siblings (the Poet, the Story Teller, the Artist, and the Linguist) in order to teach the rest of the Ktletaccete Fenekere. So, I’m trying to include basic examples of the different kinds of grammar usage. The large lettered sentences will be the simpler stuff. The smaller lettered sentences will be more complicated and nuanced. And since all of the Ktletaccete had witnessed the events being described in the book, they wouldn’t be confused by any of the illustrations like you or I might be. They’d know just what was being depicted, which would help them learn the language.
In the Beginning, page three originally appeared on Drawing Contraption on 2014/09/25.