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Re: [ceqli] Re: What

In a message dated 8/22/2007 7:50:02 AM Central Daylight Time, rmay@hidden.email writes:


> > to jino hu padey kom to karn dodey kom pan.

The man who ate the meat yesterday today eats bread.

> >
> > And since I borrowed 'hu' from English, it _looks_ like a relative pronoun
> > but isn't.
> >
>
> Could you add translations for your examples?  And also give an example of
> "sa"?
>

Sure. Sorry.  I've added it above. And to explain hu and sa further,  Sa works like Mandarin
'de,' in that it signals that the phrase before it modifies the word after it. So you'd have:

to padey kom to karn sa jino dodey kom pan.

And hu works the opposite way, moving the modifying phrase after the modified word.  
Sometimes using hu makes things clearer than sa.


Do "hu" and "sa" work as well for objects of the secondary clause?  How about as other roles in that clause?  Are these right?

The meat the man saw yesterday he ate today.
(or more naturally:  the man ate the meat he saw yesterday today)

to karn hu to jino padey saw he dodey kom.

to padey to jino saw sa karn he dodey kom.

I prefer having a pronoun to fill the gap in sentences like this, but English doesn't use one, and most European languages don't either.

stevo