A conlang relay was held in May and June 2024 by conlang enthusiasts at the Department of German Studies and Linguistics of Humboldt University of Berlin in association with a few non-Humboldtian friends, together comprising the informal Berlin Conlangers Regulars’ Table. Thinking about it, the last relay I must’ve participated in was the one on the occasion of the 4th Language Creation Conference in 2011 … Pesky little time-flies and their beloved arrows!
My task was to analyze Dominique’s text in Hoan based on his notes and a word list, to translate it into Ayeri as the fourth runner, and to provide the same kind of materials for my successor Henrik, who analyzed my text and translated it into ʀu.lu in turn. Due to this round’s small and very local scope of five active participants, all of which are German speakers, it was naturally run in German.
The PDF linked above consequently uses German as the meta language for all comments on translation as well as for the smooth back-translations. Here is the text I reconstructed with the help of Dominique’s notes translated into in English—probably not without misunderstanding the one or the other construction. Anyhow, it’s a dire little tale. Unknown to me at the time, the original text was Das Hündlein von Bretta from the Brothers Grimm’s collection of Deutsche Sagen (“German Legends”).
The little dog of Fērm
A man lived in a small town named Fērm. He had a loyal little dog. The little dog always obeyed him. And the man sent it to the butcher for it to buy some sausage and meat. It took the basket, in which were found a written note and sufficient money, in its mouth. And the little dog received some sausage and meat for the man, but the man did not receive any meat for the dog [from the dog?].
Mr. Luther sent his little dog to the butcher on a Friday. The little dog brought the order from the pope: “From now on, fast all Friday!” The butcher caught sight of the note in the little dog’s basket about what the pope had ordered regarding the sausage, and off he lopped its tail! He put the tail into the little dog’s basket. And he said: “There you’ve got your meat!”
The wounded little dog with the basket went to the houses of the street [back to the row of houses on the street?]. Fall and death. There the townsfolk were crying. This is why they made statues of dogs without a tail.
Of course, the poor little doggy didn’t fare any better either in my Ayeri translation (😢), which I will quote in the following. I won’t reproduce the sentence-by-sentence annotation of the text with grammatical glosses as contained in the PDF in English here—sorry! I hope those of you who can’t read German can be consoled with a recording of the text that I’m adding below instead.
Veney-veney ya Peram
Ang mitanya ayon ayronya kivo garaneri Peram. Ang tahisaya veney-veneyas nasi si yam rodasayong ya tadayen. Sa turaya bahisya men ayonang veney-veney baryatiyam, kadāre ang mya inco tubayley nay bariley-kay. Ang da-kacisayo bantari yona kasuley, siyā yomāran pangisreng-ma, panyanreng naynay, nay ang sitang-payo sasānya. Nay ang tavyo veney-veney tubayley nay bariley-kay ayonyam, nārya ang ta-tavya ayon ranyaley veney-veneyena.
Ya turaya mayisa ang Apican diyan veney-veneyas baryatiyam Miyan da-cuyam. Ang anlyo veney-veney nosānas natrayonena visam: “Cunu dabas gutasayam ya Miyan ikan.” Ang silvya baryati kasuya tamanley minena si ang nosaya mayisa natrayon visam barina nay ang hayarya māy sitramas veney-veneyena. Ang tapyya epang sitramas kasuya veney-veneyena. Da-narayāng: “Adaya barireng vana!”
Ang sa-sarayo veney-veney nasi nupisa kirinya kayvo kasuya, nārya lesayong nay ang pengalyo tenyanas. Ang da-teryon keynam ayronya simbeyley samang. Sa tiyasayo masahatay adaya gebisanye yelang veneyyeri.
Sound recording of the Ayeri leg of the Berlin Conlang Relay
When the text is translated back into English as below, you can see not a lot has changed even though I took some liberties and went with the conjectures I made based on context. I also couldn’t help myself “Ayeri-izing” the names, so Φerm/Fērm becomes Peram, and roošu Luter/Mr. Luther consequently becomes Apican diyan (from apitu ‘clean, pure’, cf. MHG lūter ‘clean, pure, light, honest’, NHG lauter ‘pure, unspoiled; honest, honorable’).
The little dog of Peram
A man lived in a little town named Peram. He owned a loyal little dog which always obeyed him. One day, the man sent the little dog to the butcher, for it to buy some sausage and meat. So with its mouth, it grabbed the basket, in which were found enough money as well as a written note, and set out. And the little dog received some sausage and meat for the man, but the man did not receive anything back from the little dog.
To wit, it was on a Friday that Apican diyan had sent the little dog to the butcher. The little dog brought the order from the archpriest: “From today on, fast on Fridays all day long.” The butcher caught sight of the note about what the archpriest had ordered regarding the sausage, and lopped off the little dog’s tail! Then he put the tail into the little dog’s basket. And he said: “Your meat’s right there!”
The wounded little dog went back to the road with the basket, but it fell and died. There the townsfolk shed ten thousand tears. Ever since, statues were made there of dogs without a tail.
Professor Cysouw used to give us illustrative problems from the Linguistics Olympiad in his Languages of the World lecture (patterned on the textbook of the same name by Pereltsvaig) that I attended toward the end of my Master’s program. As a mental exercise, those problems were fun to solve, and analyzing Dominique’s text in Hoan tickled a similar nerve for me. Moreover I was surprised how much of Ayeri’s grammar I’ve still got memorized even though it’s been years since I regularly translated things into it for fun.
Since the bunch of us are all currently living in Berlin, a few of us met up for drinks at a nice bar in Neukölln to celebrate finishing the relay, read our own texts out loud, try our very best not to twist our tongues while reading the texts of those who couldn’t be there out loud, and to share our experiences of translating the text.
Small get-together at a bar to recap the relay and just generally hang out
Hm, let’s see … Ayeri could simply have sapinyam /saˈpinjam/ ’to health’ (health-DAT) for a basic toast. Alternatively, how about ringu tey /ˈriŋu ˌtei/ ‘raise ’em’ (raise-IMP 3PL.INAN.P)? Actually, I think that has a nice cheerful, um, ring to it. It’s also basically equivalent to German hoch die Tassen ‘bottoms up’ (up DEF.ACC.PL cup-PL). Personally, I’m looking forward to the next round, hopefully with a few more people participating and maybe a chaotic factor like, indeed, Toki Pona thrown in, if anyone is up to it. Prost! 🍻
