Re: Subjects and verb

On Oct 7, 3:31 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Oct 7, 6:01 am, Craoibhi...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:



On Oct 7, 6:32 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Oct 6, 7:53 pm, Trond Engen <trond...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Craoibhi...@xxxxxxxxx skreiv:

On Oct 4, 2:50 am, Trond Engen <trond...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Craoibhi...@xxxxxxxxx skreiv:

[on a completely different matter] see this quote from Eino Leino's
"Löysäläisen laulu":
Maantietä matkaa
*kirjaton*, *karjaton* mies.
Kruununkin kyyti
liika ois hälle kenties,
outoja hälle kun on
isänmaa, kotipaikka ja lies,
puolue, perhe ja muu
verot, verka ja velka ja ies

("Down the highway he is travelling,
a man *without book and without cattle*.
To be given a lift, even by the Crown,
would probably be too much for him.
To him all is alien:
fatherland, home and hearth,
party, family and other things,
taxes, cloth and debt and yoke.")

Landevegen lokkar
bodskapslaus, buskapslaus mann.
Fylgje med fantar
vore for mykje for han.
Alt er så framandt og rangt,
ættegard, heimebøar og land,
våpenbrør, vener og alt,
skattar, skurdar og skulder og band

[...] Thank you very much, Trond, your translation is quite
delightful.

Thank you too. Note, though, that I cheated by using Nynorsk, which is
easier to fit in rhyme, rhythm and alliteration than my usual Bokmål,
and that I got the first and final lines almost for free.

I've been wrestling with an English one, and since these are silent days
in sci.lang, here it is (but I don't know if the opening works):

Loosing his way like an

Losing

armyless, armourless knight.
Biding with beggars
would be too mellow and bright.
All things he knew seem so strange,
homestead and patrimony and right,
fellowship, family and that,
manners, money and mortgage and plight.

--
Trond Engen
- one meter ahead

Using both alliteration and rhyme is rather un-English.

Do you dare imitate the Kalevala meter, as Longfellow did in Hiawatha?

The original does not use the Kalevala meter. This is the Kalevala
meter:

Míele/ní mi/nún te/kévi
Áivo/ní a/játte/lévi
Lä'hte/ä'ni /láula/máhan
Sáa'a/ní sa/néle/máhan

But an English imitation of Finnish verse can be expected to imitate
(stereo)typically Finnish traits.

Well, that's fair enough, but as the original "Löysäläisen laulu" can
be sung, I would prefer any English translation to be singable, and to
the same tune as the original. "Löysäläisen laulu" means "The
Slacker's Song", more or less. The noun "löysäläinen" (genitive:
"löysäläisen") is a noun of Eino Leino's own making; it is derived
from "löysä" = "slack, loose, soft, diarrhoeic" (actually a Swedish
borrowing and cognate with the New Norwegian "-laus" in Trond's
translation, which actually has almost the same diphthong) with the
addition of "-lainen", "-läinen", which is most often used for
deriving nationalities' names:

amerikkalainen "American"
englantilainen "Englishman"
saksalainen "German"
puolalainen "Polish"
suomalainen "Finnish"
ruotsalainen "Swedish"
norjalainen "Norwegian"
helsinkiläinen "an inhabitant of Helsinki"
michiganilainen "a Michigander"
kentuckylainen "a native of Kentucky"
virginialainen "Virginian"
metsäläinen "a backwoodsman" from metsä "forest"
kaupunkilainen "a city dweller" from kaupunki "city, town"
kyläläinen "a village dweller" from kylä "village, hamlet"
mökkiläinen "a cottage dweller" from mökki "a small hut, a summer
cottage"

.

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