Friday, July 29, 2011

At peace...

In my last post I promised to look into the phrase 'Und lara khar', translated in a Starcraft book-series as "Be at peace!". So as I promised, this is it. First of all the phrase is a wish, used as a farewell greeting between two individuals, but it can be also used with a group.

The first "und" part is a Khalani particle for making a wish, kind of an optative mood or a kind of auxiliary morpheme. Here it is stating "I hope that...", it is followed by "lara khar", this means quite literally "with peace" (Notice that "khar" has already been stated as meaning "peace"). The thing is that the whole phrase literally means "May (you) be with peace", the pronoun is obviated here as the meaning is pretty straightforward from context.

This conjunction, lara, means "with, alongside, next to" and is very similar to other conjunctions in other languages such as Latin "apud". In this case the peace is wished to be "with" or to accompany the person to whom it is wished, and this is how Protoss normally say this expression "with peace", not using "at" as in English but rather "to be with a state of mind", to be "accompanied by peace".

In any case, the full sentence would be;
Und nas lara khar
May you be with peace, i.e. 'Be at peace'
But you could also say, more grammatically;
Und laranas khar
May peace be with you
Notice the subtle difference in meaning and the -nas ending which is the second person singular. All pronouns are appended this way to this particular conjunction. If we were to substitute it for the first person singular (I, me);
Und laranakh khar
May peace be with me
Here the pronoun changes when it is attached to the conjunction, as the other sentence would have been;
Und ankh lara khar
May I be with peace
Of course the verb "to be" is obviated, since there is no such verb in Khalani, so it is understood from the particle "und". This is also applicable as a normal "with" conjunction, thus;
Ankh laranas, Nas laranakh
Me with you, you with me
Or in a sentence;
Und taro laranakh var!
May you honor his name with me!
This is all for today, next time we'll see some more pronouns!

Adun toridas!

6 comments:

  1. Adun toridas,
    var one!
    Loved that lesson.

    I have one question is there any alphabet of Khalani?

    If there is none i could help creating it ...

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  2. Thank you so much for the compliment.

    Right now there's no Khalani alphabet but your help would be most welcome. Just contact me on my e-mail and we can talk about it.

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  4. (sorry about the last post; I wasn't finished editing)

    First, I have to say a million times thank you for this. I have always enjoyed the Protoss from the lore in-game and a story on fanfiction.org has encouraged me to think deeply on the Khalai culture, sending me on a wild ride through the Wikia and the forums. I personally am enamored with linguistics so this blog has just made my week, at least.

    (Seriously though, it's called "Rasti's Flight", and it's a great short story. Simple plot, relatively simple characters, but it is a fearless - if perhaps idealistic - delve into the culture of the Nerazim. If you have the chance I hope you will read it.)

    Second, as I thought about 'lara' a bit, I wondered about how you might combine some of the words in the lexicon, and I happened across this one: "Your honor with your name," perhaps a poetic way of expressing the idea that your name carries the greater meaning of your actions.

    My initial reaction is to translate that into "Varan lara taran," does that seem reasonable?

    Finally, a question about 'harudo' - his memory. I assumed this is more adequately translated as "the memory of him," than "the memory he has;" is that assumption correct? Also, if I were to say "I am at peace with his memory" in English it does imply that 'he' is now dead. Do you think "Ankh lara khar [*of] harudo" has the same implication?

    (It's not an exact translation, but I felt it an appropriate one. For *, I mean some possessive particle, if such a thing exists)

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    1. Turiski, thank you so much for your kind words and I hope to see a lot more of you around the blog and the comments. I know what you mean about the wild ride through the Wikia and the forums, I made such a ride myself too. So be very welcome!

      Your question is very interesting. The first phrase is completely correct, that would translate as "your honor is with your name" roughly. Again you are right with 'harudo', which is the "memory one has of someone". Finally for the sentence you ask you would need to say "Ankh lara khar lara harudo", it does not really imply the person is dead, but one can assume that talking about the "memory" of someone, that this person is actually dead.

      In fact you have another more "idiomatic" way of saying it which rather remarks the fact that the person is no longer living; "Ankh lara khar en harudo" which also translates as "I'm at peace with his memory" but with the idea this person is not available anymore.

      I hope you enjoyed the answers, I really did enjoy the comment and the opportunity to elaborate on this topic. Hope to see more of you soon enough!

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  5. Thanks, friend! I'm glad you enjoy the post!

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