I would have liked to post this yesterday, but hardware failure struck.
I've noted a few surprising things with Greek letters: I've already asked RAWA to confirm that these are as intended, but obviously I don't expect to hear anything until after Obduction has gone to the presses, and likely not even then.
The original text was provided in D'niFont (and has here been manually copied from another screen an another computer, where I'm doing a drive recovery). Before the hardware failure, I also performed a semi-automated OTS translation on it (which I then transferred to paper for ease of interlinear translation). Any scribal errors I may have introduced in these fragments should therefore be mostly uncorrelated.
.Kåmrov teSemtE vUhE belen rU xanril KobolKEbaen ze nEgeS gopa tomanatEomE gamUDentEomE gaxotOtEomE KoKenEt t'pAcavo gagopa KosofeguEt zo'e'os gimit inA r'Ax'DA oKo garUDS okze Kåmrov KofUsaEt rebareltan haza gatrel
.Kåmrov teshemtē vūhē belen rū tsanril kobolkēbaen ze nēgesh gopa tomanatēomē gamūdentēomē gatsotoytēomē kokenēt t'pāchavo gagopa kosofeguēt zo'e'os gimit inā r'āts'dā oko garūdsh okhze kåmrov kofūsaēt rebareltan haza gatrel
A quick rundown of the new vocabulary, in occurrence. [β] denotes words with significant departures from known D'ni phonotactics.
bel, v. claim
kēba, v. obey
nēgesh, adv. merely
gopa, conj. because
mūden, n. fortune (as 'possessions, valuable things owned')
tsotoy, n. child
t'pāchavo, idiom in danger (probably pāchavo, n. danger, but could be something surprising)
sofegu, v. fear
zo'e'os, n. loss [β]
gimit, adj. immediate
āts'dā, n. retribution
oko, adj. black
rūdsh [β], adj. red
fūsa, v. call
haza, adj. white
trel, adj. blue
We have:
-two former hapax legomena, nēgesh and trel. Not at all the ones I was expecting!
-
one maybe-former-hapax-legomenon, kēba. Given this, I suspect Gehn's /kiːbaːjem/ should be kēbaem, and likewise that his /aːrojem/ is probably aroem.
-
a rare (but not unprecedented) three-syllable verb sofegu. (See oenazo and tokitu.)
-
that bareltan, despite its literal meaning of "one who creates", would probably still be used in reference to non-creator deities featured in the religions of non-D'ni cultures.
And, finally, the new grammar.
No explicit interrogative marker
The relative pronoun kåmrov is used without alteration as the interrogative pronoun. There is also no distinct interrogative punctuation marker. "Thoe" is probably a phoneticism.
kobol-, past irrealis(?) verbal prefix
This corresponds to the English would [...] have in the original text. Whether bol- can be used without ko-, in nonnegative sentences, or in any realis contexts is unknown. (It's technically even possible that bolkeebah is a single verb, but I doubt it.)
ze, 3rd person object pronoun
This may be specifically animate. (Or animate-feminine; but, as Kathryn Aveara has pointed out, that's unlikely.) It's surprising, but it does match with the first-person object pronoun zoo: perhaps this is indicative of historical suppletion?
-omē, 2nd person plural possessive suffix
Not what I was expecting either!
inā, comparative marker
This may, grammatically, be either a preposition or a conjunction.
kåmrov, animate relative object pronoun
Already attested as the animate relative subject pronoun, of course.
-en/-ēt, ??? [γ]
Where the English text uses "you" as the verbal subject, the D'ni has third-person verbal suffixes. There are several possible reasons for this, including:
-a general aversion to 2nd person plural subjects, due to frequent confusion with nominal plural (consistent with the paucity of examples we have);
-kåmrov specifically requiring the third person in modern D'ni, even when interrogative, and this carrying through to the rest of the sentence;
-simple error.
None of these explanations strike me as so much more likely than the others that I'll stake an opinion on them.
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