random conlang post
so i watched into the woods today and later while i was doing a little conlanging i somehow got to thinking of that weird musical theater version of alice in wonderland called alice at the palace (idk why????) with meryl streep as alice, and i remembered a line from one of the songs that i think was like “dont drink out of bottles of poison, children get burned and eaten by beasts!” and i wondered how you could say that using gung’keum. so i translated it, which took about forty five minutes. here it is in the native orthography and then phonetically. and then in ipa cause why not.
pywa sàt no goo gaaw neo sping’mgoon dang moy, dáw’yám bàaw kprà dot ru may nwuung bryok wa.
fo2 sat4 ne hua3 hiau3 n ping1guan3 dang3 moi, tau6yam6 piau5 po4 det3 lu2 mai2 nung1 beuk3 wa.
fɔ˧ sɛt̚˦˨ nə xu͡a˨ xi͡aw˨ n̩ pʰiə̯ŋ˦.ku͡ɛn˨ tɑŋ˨ moɪ̯ | tʰaw˨˦.jɛm˨˦ pʰi͡aw˧˩ pʰɔ˥˧ tət̚˨ lu˧ maɪ̯˧ nuə̯ŋ˦ bøk̚˨ wa
(i guess i should explain tone marks- 1 is a high-level tone, 2 is mid-level, 3 is low-level, 4 is high-falling or just falling in syllables ending in p t or k, 5 is low-falling, and 6 is rising.)
literally translated it’s “dont drink NE from poison of bottle in MOI, child come burn burnt and/or by beast eat WA!”. “fo2” is basically only used in negative commands and means “don’t”, the particle “ne” heads an adverbial phrase and here serves to clarify that alice herself isnt coming out of the bottle of poison (i think you could leave it out and still be understood), “moi” is a combination of two words “m” and “oi”, “m” being like an obligatory sentence-final negative particle triggered by the negative word “fo2” and “oi” being a sentence-final particle that lends a meaning like “hey!” or “don’t you…” to the sentence, “piau5” here means “come to, end up”, “po4 det3” means like “burn (someone/oneself) until charred/burnt,” or just “get burned”, “lu” can mean “and” or “or”, it just loosely connects two clauses, and “wa” just makes the sentence extra urgent and emphasized. so, you get “hey, don’t drink out of bottles of poison, children get burned and eaten by beasts!” i dont really know what this lyric means.
from now on im tagging all my conlanging posts as “conlanging tag” in case any of you wants to blacklist them. and worldbuilding posts will be “worldbuilding tag” but i havent really made many of those yet.