The twenty-fourth text, and the first portrait of one person. The genres so far are stories, arguments, dialogues, a poem, a letter, a recipe, a meal, a room, a life and a journey; nobody had described a face.
It is also a test of something the gap list raises and does not settle. The dictionary has no word for a grandmother, and the kinship set is fourteen of twenty-seven — but possession puts the owner straight after the thing owned, so mama mama mi is the mother of my mother and needs no root at all. This page is written to find out whether that holds for a whole text or only for a heading.
Written at 300 roots, with no grammar beyond Lesson 26.
Mama mama mi hidup in dom keci.
Dom ta in tarik. Sungai dekat.
Rambut ta putih. Ain ta keci aur hao.
Mano ta kuat porke ta suda hidup cok tahun.
Cehra ta punya cok historia.
Ta otur in kursi kab aksam lai.
Ta kara libro eski. Ta no mau telefon.
Mi lai. Ta sema: "Otur sini, anak."
Ta beri ca garam aur pan dulce.
Kita sema. Kita kanta.
Ta ingat tempo baid.
Ta sema: "Mi suda kan dunia."
Mi dengar. Mi no sema.
Ta suda hidup umur cang.
Ta punya cok sabar aur cok kalima.
Rat lai. Ta lala.
Mi kan cehra ta. Mi senang aur mi sedih.
Line by line
| Amadunia | English |
|---|---|
| Mama mama mi hidup in dom keci. | My mother’s mother lives in a small house. |
| Dom ta in tarik. Sungai dekat. | Her house is on a road. The river is near. |
| Rambut ta putih. | Her hair is white. |
| Ain ta keci aur hao. | Her eyes are small and kind. |
| Mano ta kuat porke ta suda hidup cok tahun. | Her hands are strong because she has lived many years. |
| Cehra ta punya cok historia. | Her face has much history. |
| Ta otur in kursi kab aksam lai. | She sits in a chair when evening comes. |
| Ta kara libro eski. | She reads an old book. |
| Ta no mau telefon. | She does not want a telephone. |
| Mi lai. | I come. |
| Ta sema: “Otur sini, anak.” | She says: “Sit here, child.” |
| Ta beri ca garam aur pan dulce. | She gives hot tea and sweet bread. |
| Kita sema. Kita kanta. | We talk. We sing. |
| Ta ingat tempo baid. | She remembers a far-off time. |
| Ta sema: “Mi suda kan dunia.” | She says: “I have seen the world.” |
| Mi dengar. Mi no sema. | I listen. I do not speak. |
| Ta suda hidup umur cang. | She has lived a long life. |
| Ta punya cok sabar aur cok kalima. | She has much patience and many words. |
| Rat lai. Ta lala. | Night comes. She sleeps. |
| Mi kan cehra ta. | I look at her face. |
| Mi senang aur mi sedih. | I am happy and I am sad. |
What the possession rule did
It gave the language a grandmother without a root. mama mama mi is two applications of one rule: mama mi is my mother, and mama in front of that phrase owns it. Nothing marks either step. The same shape gives a grandfather, and dugu mama mi an uncle or an aunt — which is what the gap note already suspected and what a whole page now shows.
And it holds for exactly one step of remove. mama mama mama mi would be a great-grandmother, and it is unreadable rather than ungrammatical: three identical words in a row with nothing to group them. The rule does not forbid it and no reader could parse it, which is a different kind of limit from the ones this repository usually records — not a missing word but a shape that runs out.
Gaps
Nothing can be near anything. The first draft of the second line read Dom ta in tarik dekat sungai — her house is on a road near the river — and it is not a sentence: dekat is an adjective, adjectives follow their noun, and so tarik dekat is “a near road” with the river left dangling. The language has three prepositions, in, dari and por, and none of them is beside. The page says Dom ta in tarik. Sungai dekat. — two sentences, with the relation between them left to the reader. Recorded with the other things the writing has asked for, and it is the first gap this repository has found in the preposition set rather than in the vocabulary.
No word for an old person. eski is old and is used here of a book. Using it of a person is grammatical and cold; the text says ta suda hidup umur cang, she has lived a long life, which is longer and kinder and not the same thing. genc has an opposite in the dictionary only for objects.
No word for kind. Ain ta keci aur hao is glossed “small and kind” because that is what the sentence means here, and hao is simply “good”. The language cannot separate a good person from a kind one, and this page leans on context to do it. Recorded with the other gaps.
A face cannot hold anything. Cehra ta punya cok historia — her face has much history — is the nearest the language gets to a face that shows a life. punya is possession and nothing else; there is no show, no carry, no tell that takes a thing rather than a person, and the verb list has no candidate to press into the job.
And the portrait has no word for what a portrait is about. There is no look as a noun, no age apart from umur which is also life, and no way to say someone is beautiful in the sense a grandchild means. sundar is in the dictionary and is not used here, because it would have been the wrong word.
Roots used
59 of 300.