D'ni language questions here?

HarveyMidnight · **Joined:** Sat Apr 14, 2012 2:59 pm **Posts:** 432

Hello... I'm bangin' around with the D'ni dictionary--- never had a class in the language, so I am wondering if I've gotten some of these words and phrases correctly.

Starting with my name "Harvey Midnight": I thought the D'ni phrase "Hahr v’ja mehd'neet" might be a cool D'ni soundalike of my name.. with "Hahr" = year; "V'ja" celebration" "Meh" from, D'nee - of course, a new start or new beginning, with the "-t" suffix making it a noun. I thought "MehD'neet" might mean something along the lines of , "that which has become new again." "that which has come from a new beginning". i.e. "regeneration", used as a noun?

...Like when you call Peter Capaldi the Doctor's current "regeneration"?

So maybe "Hahr v’ja Mehd'neet" could be D'ni for something like "celebration of a year which has come from a new beginning"? Which I meant to be a reference to the celebration of New Year's Eve, and the new year beginning at--- you guessed it-- Midnight.

"Partahvo Noref" which I have used as a D'ni name in the past, means "Final hour"--- with, of course 'partahvo' generally used to suggest a "D'ni hour". Pretty sure I have that right.

I also thought this could be a good signature line, tho: “Repartavo noref ahnee erth yahr’ni.” Have I got this right? I was trying to say "The final hour brings (or becomes) a new day." = i.e. the concept of "midnight". It's similar to my old slogan, but I'm not sure I ever had that one right.. also, I lost access to the site where my old siggy pic was posted, and honestly i don't remember how I worded it.

Any D'ni linguists care to 'school' me?

KathAveara · **Posted:** Sun Dec 20, 2015 1:09 pm

HarveyMidnight wrote:

Hello

Shorah! Let's see if I can help.

Quote:

I thought the D'ni phrase "Hahr v’ja mehd'neet" might be a cool D'ni soundalike of my name.. with "Hahr" = year; "V'ja" celebration" "Meh" from, D'nee - of course, a new start or new beginning, with the "-t" suffix making it a noun. I thought "MehD'neet" might mean something along the lines of , "that which has become new again." "that which has come from a new beginning". i.e. "regeneration", used as a noun?

The first bit looks good, but -t actually makes adjectives, cf. šorat "peaceful". I'm not sure how the phrase could be repaired to work, unfortunately. Our corpus is just too small for these kinds of word games.

Quote:

"Partahvo Noref" which I have used as a D'ni name in the past, means "Final hour"--- with, of course 'partahvo' generally used to suggest a "D'ni hour". Pretty sure I have that right.

No problems there.

Quote:

I also thought this could be a good signature line, tho: “Repartavo noref ahnee erth yahr’ni.” Have I got this right? I was trying to say "The final hour brings (or becomes) a new day."

The verb there should have -en suffixed - i.e. aníen - as it's 3rd person singular. erþ "a, an" should be prefixed, and ní "new" ought to be a separate word, though I suppose you could make a case for having a compound here (in which case, drop the apostrophe).

Which reminds me, I should get around to writing those D'ni lessons...

HarveyMidnight · **Joined:** Sat Apr 14, 2012 2:59 pm **Posts:** 432

Quote:

The first bit looks good, but -t actually makes adjectives, cf. šorat "peaceful". I'm not sure how the phrase could be repaired to work, unfortunately. Our corpus is just too small for these kinds of word games.

Ahh.. so the translation might be more "regenerated" than a noun-form of "regeneration".. a "state of having been renewed." Maybe it could mean "Celebration of a renewed year"??

Quote:

The verb there should have -en suffixed - i.e. aníen - as it's 3rd person singular. erþ "a, an" should be prefixed, and ní "new" ought to be a separate word, though I suppose you could make a case for having a compound here (in which case, drop the apostrophe).

So... “Repartavo noref aníen erthyahr ni.” ??

korovev · **Posted:** Sun Dec 20, 2015 7:49 pm

The problem is that the ‘normal’ word for “regeneration” would probably be d’netsotahv, d’bahreltahv or d’mahrntahv, but of course that wouldn’t fit the sound-alike requirement.
Also, New Year would likely be hahrnee, like Terahnee or, in fact, yahrnee; so “New Year Celebrations” would be something like hahrnee v’jah.

I understand hahr v’jah mehd’neet as “year celebrations from new-beginning-y”; I’m not aware of a D’ni word usable in that context that sounds like “midnight”.

A better transcription for the second phrase would be repahrtahvo noref ahneeen erthyahr nee (OTS) or repartavo noref aníen erþyar ní (NTS). Or repartavo noref anEen erTyar nE, of course :wink:

.
Though I would probably use laysoo “carry” instead of ahnee “become”.

HarveyMidnight · **Joined:** Sat Apr 14, 2012 2:59 pm **Posts:** 432

I guess I'll just have to stick with "Hahr v’ja" as a 'nick' with the stipulation that the annual celebration it refers to, is the New Year. Use that and "Partavo Noref" interchangably...

Thanks all, for the help!

korovev · **Posted:** Sun Dec 27, 2015 8:26 pm

I think that hahrnee is a better soundalike than hahr v’ja, but it’s up to you of course.

(By the way, check this thread for more signature lines)

lteyn63 · **Posted:** Tue Jan 12, 2016 4:30 pm

Hi. This doesn't answer any of the above posts, but this is a question for The Lost Art project. Does anyone know how to pronounce "Meesem D'ni?" (i.e. "Do you speak D'ni?")

Thanks.

korovev · **Posted:** Tue Jan 12, 2016 5:52 pm

Something like this (click on the speaker icon on the left side).

lteyn63 · **Posted:** Tue Jan 12, 2016 6:13 pm

Wow thanks! Now I just have to get the right person to listen to that! :-)

KathAveara · **Posted:** Wed Jan 13, 2016 9:46 am

What do you need it for?

Talashar · **Joined:** Sun Dec 08, 2013 12:24 pm **Posts:** 91

lteyn63 wrote:

Hi. This doesn't answer any of the above posts, but this is a question for The Lost Art project. Does anyone know how to pronounce "Meesem D'ni?" (i.e. "Do you speak D'ni?")

Using English as a rough guide:

ee and the final i of D'ni are both Long E as in seem, meet, need
s is unvoiced, as in song
e is Short E as in met, fed, hen
The apostrophe is a schwa as in the last vowel of sofa, Asia, coma

AlanD · **Posted:** Fri Jan 15, 2016 10:19 pm

Talashar wrote:

"The apostrophe is a schwa as in the last vowel of sofa, Asia, coma"

Now, I've always seen the apostrophe as a glottal stop, which is a slightly different sound to the schwa. I think that David Ogden Stiers's accent when playing Escher shows this - which you could regard as a different D'ni accent, or as a different actor's take on the use of the ' . Personally, I prefer to think of it as a different D'ni accent, a way that some D'ni would pronounce those words compared to others e.g Yeesha. It adds some depth to the D'ni as a people, having them not all sound the same.

korovev · **Posted:** Sat Jan 16, 2016 12:42 am

According to the Word of RAWA,

Quote:

An apostrophe after a consonant (e.g. "D'ni") is a schva (minimal vowel); an apostrophe after a vowel is a glottal stop (e.g. the dash in "uh-oh").

Talashar · **Joined:** Sun Dec 08, 2013 12:24 pm **Posts:** 91

Esher doesn't use a glottal stop in D'ni either, but pronounces it almost as if it were d'khnee. Rawa has his own Esher theory.

AlanD · **Posted:** Sat Jan 16, 2016 2:16 am

Ah, I see; snakes, eh?

Well, I still like to think that Esher had a regional accent. After all, the variations in English between North and South (UK, that is) can be just as extreme, without getting into Scots (which is a separate but closely related language).

RAWA does describe Esher's "D'cknee" as containing a glottal stop, but that it should not, according to formal D'ni grammar. So maybe Esher was the D'ni equivalent of a Scouser, a Liverpudlian....

Anyway, in my ignorance I've always defaulted to pronouncing an apostrophe as a sort of glottal stop whenever I've encountered them, mostly in SF stories. Heading in the direction of the Xhosa "click", more or less.

Which reminds me - if you read SF at all you may just have come across a short story by Joe Haldeman, about translators in a spacefaring society, in which an alien language includes, on top of an apostrophe, a sound represented on the page as an exclamation mark. The story is called "A !Tangled Web" and is really rather good. There isn't a pronunciation guide

But the bit that got me ws the carefully formal, stilted and quietly amusing way that the aliens have of expressing a sentiment that we might use "I'm Sorry" for... An example (Uncle is a !tang, one of the aliens and Navarro is the human translator, here to close a trade deal):

Navarro: —Please do not be embarrassed. This is often true when different peoples meet. Did my brother say what tribe he represented?
Uncle: —I die. O my hair falls out and my flesh rots and my bones are cracked by the hungry ta!a'an. He drops me behind him all around the forest and nothing will grow where his excrement from my marrow falls. As the years pass the forest dies from the poison of my remains. The soil washes into the sea and poisons the fish, and all die. O the embarrassment.
Navarro: —He didn't say?
Uncle: —He did but said not to tell you.

(needless to say, this is all translated from !tanglish, which is described as grunts, clicks, snorts and wheezes...)

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