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Translate the phrase “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”
Oh boy, this is going to be worse than the eels!
biñaasik kikrämitra Inkuwisitän kä Siban.
bi=ñaa=t=ik ki-krämit-ra Inkuwisitän kä Siban
exist-NEG=DIR=PROX.ANI ANI-expect-DEM Inquisition POSS.INA Spain
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!Again, same problems with both the lack of knowledge of Spain and the lack of a concept of Inquisition. I could have tried a circumlocution for the latter but that would have been far too much work!
Missa:
Milum Espananterle garon dijla.
mil-um espana-nter=le gar-on dij-la
person-NEG Spain-land=POSS look-NMZ wait-TR
Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition!Notes:
milum ‘nobody’ is literally ‘no-person’. mil ‘person’ is one of very few nouns which can take a verbal affix like -um due to its additional use as the base of indefinite pronouns referring to people.
espanańer ‘Spain’ is comprised of the root espana, borrowed from España, and the country-forming affix -nter ‘country, land’, from the noun ėnter ‘country, land’. It takes the clitic =le, which is better described as an affix which makes the previous word (or phrase, if that word is the head of its phrase) a modifier of a following noun. While this means something like ‘adjective-maker’ in this sentence, it also applies to relative clauses when attached to a verb, and acts as a possessive case marker between two nouns, whence it receives its gloss.
garon ‘inquisition’ I made up on the spot since I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the word. An inquisition (also inquiry) comes from in + quaerere in Latin, ‘to look into, seek for’, so I decided to pull back a heretofore abandoned root in Missa, gar-, meaning ‘look’, and use it in a similar manner. The ending -on is a common verb nominalization affix referring to an instance of an action.
dijla ‘expect’ is literally the verb dijlik ‘to wait (for)’ with the valency-increasing affix -la.
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