Yivrian text

Al ku goyyaa no elédesona kétoyal omat luskes.

Nartyara el pespoyéos em peroya al da elédelona.

Al moalmunyar el em élos aileva rodeperoya, lai bisyal el.

Té kalé nessil akéhaméla naputuinyala.

Lainyu almuyal em kéhaméla manaitenyala.

Yivrian glossary

I'll give verbs and adjectives separately, but I'll show their roots in parentheses. You might benefit again from the lexicon at my website.

aileva - intensive form of "al" (see below)
al - I (epicene 1sg pron)
almuya (almu) - to understand
bisya (bis) - to follow, to be behind
da - in
el - he (3sg masc pron)
eled - home, house
em - conjunction indicating something thought, desired, or understood [1]
goyya (gol) - to travel on foot
kalé - a pregnant belly; pregnancy
kéhamé - wife
kétoya (kéto) - to meet, to be introduced
ku - when (relative adverb) [2]
lai - therefore, so; then
lainyu - therefore, because of this
luskes (luska) - injured
manaitenya (manat) - to be without desire, to be content OR to be
desirelessness, to be contentment [3]
naputuya (naputu) - to surprise, to reveal suddenly
nartya (narta) - to hope for, to expect
nessil (nessa) - great, large
no - to, towards
ondat - stranger, visitor
peroya (pero) - to help
pespoya (pespo) - to request, to ask for something
té - but

Vocab notes:

[1] To get an idea of what this actually does, you really should read http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/yivrian/verb_classes.htm#Complementizers

[2] In this text, 'ku' occurs in the position directly before the verb, as is normal. The two clauses have the same subject, so it is up to you to decide which clause is the main clause and which is subordinate.

[3] 'Manaitenya' is a defective verb that only occurs in the copular forms (direct and causative). The root word 'manat' is a religious term that represents the highest Yivrian virtue, translatable as "contentment" or "desirelessness." To have manat is to have accepted both Being and Void, to be at peace, and to need to do nothing. It has something in common with the Taoist concept of _wu wei_, but without any ascetic component, for a person with manat vigorously celebrates that which he has. . . Er, anyway, as with all copular verbs, this can mean "to be manat-full" or "to be manat."

Yivrian grammar notes

Almost all of the grammar is better explained at http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/yivrian

Word Order:

Sentence word order is SVO.
Within the noun phrase, order is Head-Adjective-Prepositional Phrase
Adverbs most frequently occur immediately before the verb
Subjects and sometimes objects are freely dropped when context is sufficiently clear about who the actors are

Noun Case:

Yivrian has five noun cases, four of which occur in this text. They are:

• Nominative/Accusative - unmarked
  Used for the subject and the direct object of verbs
• Genitive - prefix a-
  Indicates possession or association
• Dative - suffix -os
  Indicates the beneficiary of an action; may be used in place of the nominative to especially emphasize the direct object of a verb. Certain verbs require an object in the dative
• Ablative - suffix -on
  Indicates the instrument, time, or place of an action. The object of a preposition must be in the ablative case if the prepositional phrase is adverbal (but not when the prepositional phrase is part of a noun phrase). When added to a word that ends with a vowel, the final vowel follows the ablative ending, e.g. kenda > kendona (NOT kendaon).

Possession:

There is a set of possessive suffixes that are used in place of possessive pronouns in Yivrian. These are attatched to the so-called "long form" of the noun stem, which is formed by adding -i- after the last vowel. The vowels {i e} become {í é} under this transformation, and vowels that are already "long" are unchanged. If the word ends with a consonant, an epinthetic /e/ is added. Finally, the possessive ending itself is added.
Two such endings occur in this text:

-sa	yours (2sg masc)
-la	his (3sg masc)

Verbs:

In this area I especially urge you to check out the verb morphology and semantics sections in my online grammar, since they make much more sense.

There are six "aspects" of a Yivrian verb. Three of them occur in this text:

• Immediate direct, ending -ya
  The unmarked verb ending, indicates the base form of a verb
• Immediate causative, ending -nya
  Indicates that the subject acts on the object to cause it to perform the action of the verb. The object of the caused action, if any, is given in a clause beginning with "eth".
• Copular direct, ending -(i)nya
  This verb ending causes a lengthening of the previous stem, just like with the possessive endings. This form indicates that the subject *is* the thing given by the noun root, or has the *quality* of the thing given by the noun root.

Tense is given by a suffix after the main verb ending. The following tense endings occur in this text:

-a present progressive
-l past inchoative (affirmative)
-r past inchoative negative
-la past progressive affirmative
-ra past progressive negative

Tense in subordinate clauses is *relative* to the tense in the main clause. If the main clause is in the past tense, then the subordinate clause will be in *present* tense if it is also in past time. (Putting the subordinate verb in past tense implies past-in-past or pluperfect, while future tense implies future-in-past.)

Mood is too complicated to explain here, so I'll just give glosses of two of the modal prefixes that occur

mo- "can" or "could"
rode- "would like to"

Smooth English translation

When I was walking to your home I met an injured stranger.
I did not expect him to ask if he could help me at his house.
I could not make him understand that *I* would help *him*, so I followed him.
But his wife's belly, large with pregnancy, was a surprise.
Then I understood that his wife was his contentment.