Senu Yivokuchi Corpus

Question and Answer on the Mountain

You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain;
I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care.
As the peach-blossom flows down stream and is gone into the unknown,
I have a world apart that is not among men.

--Li Bai

For those more knowledgeable of Chinese, the name of this poem is Shan Zhong Wèn Dá (add a horizontal line over the first two vowels). This translation is rather idiosincratic, as it often happens with such a terse language as Classical Chinese, but working on the Chinese original (with English glosses) I've managed to get a fairly good idea of the content.

Running translation

Dace ye ocet e jemade ujhao beowi,
Oreramo e alfuke ache lidreima la siu ye de.
Farjasniyi uvi eni fere cirumo,
Ge oine lafade o vai kaka alde.

Interlinear translation

1. dace ye ocet e jemade ujhao beowi
   dac-e   ye     ocet e  jem    -a  -de  u-  jhao     beow -i
   ask-PRS GEN+1s why  1s dweller-NDF-COP ESS-mountain green-DEF

2. oreramo e alfuke ache lidreima la siu ye de
   o=  rer  -a  -mo  e  al-fuk-e      ache    li- dreim  -a   la siu   ye     de
   VOL.smile-NDF-INC 1s NEG-reply-PRS because COM-concern-NDF no heart GEN+1s COP

3. farjasniyi uvi eni fere cirumo
   far=   jas=   niy  -i   u-  vi    en-i      fer  -e   ciru   -mo
   flower.spring.peach-DEF ESS-along river-DEF leave-PRS distant-INC

4. ge oine lafade o vai kaka alde
   g-  e  oine  laf  -a  -de  o     vai       ka=ka   al- de
   ALL-1s world apart-NDF-COP which ESS+among man.DUP NEG-COP

Notes:

1a. As it often happens, not just in poetry but also in colloquial rapid speech, Yivokuchi drops most of the pronouns; hence dace and not jo dace (the Chinese original drops it too!). Note that the direct object of dac- 'ask' is supposed to be the question asked (or the thing required), so this line says '[you] ask of/from me'.

1b. ocet: literally 'what-reason'.

2. rer- 'smiling' is non-volitional (suggesting a smile due to something funny, not a smile produced and directed towards someone on purpose). The volitional mark o- gives it the latter sense. Note that the inceptive copula is used in this case: orerade is grammatical but doesn't sound fine.

3a. The long word for 'peach blossom' is an example of overspecification for phonetic reasons, i. e. adding morphemes to a word in order to make clear what it means when there are several homonyms. It happens a lot in Yivokuchi since its phonology is greatly reduced and changed compared to its mother language, which could distinguish between /nej/ 'drop' and /Nij/ 'peach' (both niy in the modern language).

3b. vi means 'direction, sense of movement'.