I guess I have never been in a really cold place before. I am sitting in my living room watching the snow fall on Arthur's Seat. It is not supposed to snow in March. No way. The weather is supposed to start having blue spots instead of the constant grey that is a Washington winter. Although, I hear from my family members that it just started raining after sixteen days of blue skies. I am sure that they are now preparing for a draught but every year there are people who still water their laws even if there is a water restriction. I guess their perfect lawn is more important than saving water for everyone. Although, come to think of it, maybe they are just not informed about the restrictions.

I have to finish my poem for my class tomorrow. The poem is getting a bit difficult since there are sentences like "Iss ed is messu tic tech", which I refuse to completely translate even though I know what it means essentially because the grammar is just not there. I think it means "he came to my house" with fist pounding action. The only problem is that we have a copular sentence which is fronted (brought forward for emphasis, which is a distinctive feature of Celtic languages) with a third singular pronoun, which is usually translated as "it is" or something like that and is usually followed with a leniting or nasalizing relative clause (depending on if the topic is the subject or object of the relative; much like who and whom in English) to connect them. Then we have another copular sentence with the emphatic first singular pronoun, in later language this becomes mise and is the normal first person plural in copular sentences (I guess they screamed at each other all the time). The word tic is the third person singular preterite (past) of the verb do-tét which comes from the preposition "do" (meaning to) plus the verb "téit" (meaning go) which combine to mean come. The last word "tech" is the nominative or accusative (the word is neuter) meaning house. With copular sentences in any Indo-European language that I know, all nouns in a copular sentence become what is known as the predicate nominative.

I am sure that I have bored you to death with an explanation but I hope it gives you something of what I am doing for tomorrow's class.

posted by Chris  #9:48 AM | 0 comments |