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Lenielestel
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Post Because, for
on: January 25, 2015 12:46
Maybe I am up too late at night, but I am having an awful time trying to get around the word "because"! I have worked on it so long, I really hope there isn't a word available that I have just been too idiotic to find!

In answer to a "why" question, I have no problem just avoiding saying "because," but in other instances I am having trouble rewording. It doesn't help that I am translating a song, so I am trying to get the right amount of syllables as well!

In a phrase like, "you are wise because you sleep in a bed" (it's a lullaby) how might I avoid the because?

I thought about throwing a rhetorical question in the middle there, saying "why are you wise? You sleep in a bed." One does that frequently in American Sign Language. (Only there it would be more like: you are wise, why? You sleep in a bed.)

Thoughts?
Elhath
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on: January 25, 2015 07:00
This conjunction was also discussed recently over at the Languages of Middle-earth forum.

An unavoidably longer makeshift substitute like i aphada/*echíla o "which follows from" +verbal noun (-ed/-ad/-adel, -ien/-ian) is something that could certainly be constructed from the existing material.

Depending on the situation, one might sometimes circumvent "because" by using a word meaning "when, as" (popular *îr vs. back-traceable *î(w) < CE *ī-se/?(i)ye-sĕ¹; *toe < CE *tā yā 'then as'), or simply by using the perfective participle (-iel, "having ..ed" ) as a contracted sentence — compare the similar use of -ando, -iendo in Spanish.

At least to an English-speaker, the possibility of rendering your phrase in Sindarin as "you are wise to sleep in [a] bed" probably comes to mind as well. I myself would rather use the rephrasing pattern "you sleep in [a] bed which tells you are wise/which tells of wisdom".


¹ on the basis of Quenya írë, ier

[Edited on 01/27/2015 by Elhath]
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