More Ai-Naidari (Patreon)

Rabbit wanted to write some of the aphorisms from the chapbook, which... required me to translate them. Or more accurately, required me to see how inadequate my current grammar is when I tried to translate them. But between the two of us, we  hammered it out, and I now have translations for two of the 25! You can see them above. Pronunciation note: 'u' is 'ooh', not 'uh'. Keep that in mind, and croon these.

The first is:

"To be parted from society is to suffer."

 Davraj urudar sithum gaqethe.

The interesting thing about this one was that there are two words that could have been used for 'parted', but the one we wanted was the one you use when you're separating something from a larger part... like a bit of dough to make into a roll, or a leaf from a branch. Also, gaqethe is another of those "you could have chosen several words" situations. In this case, we wanted the one that meant useless suffering (as opposed to suffering a burden, or suffering through childbirth). More like torment.

The second is:

 "What is old has been tried and found good."

Hulvuhh notsalevn the yotsavn qafinij.

This was the sentence that led me to discover the use of second declension's "possessed by" case. *does victory dance* Honest to goodness grammar, ya'll! You... do not want to see the scrollback of the couple of hours Rabbit and I were beating on it, going through the grammar and lexicon and making sure of both the words and the conjugations. A bunch of people watched and assured us it was fascinating, but I bet it sounded like crazy talk for the most part. >.>

Please note my calligraphy is awful compared to Rabbit's, who's been posting photos in the Discord chat and they are amaaaazing. When Farren talks about the aunerai calligrapher, Rabbit's now the one he means, not me. (Which is fine... I'm totally content to be the aunerai scribe! My alien handwriting is atrocious!)

Anyway. Conlang. :D