Lesson #2: Hellos and Goodbyes
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An overview of basic introductions in Hinamira.
This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 13 May 2020, 23:12.
[comments] nhmlessonslesson 2
2. Dislocation
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7. Personal Pronouns
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11. Word Order
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This article is a work in progress! Check back later in case any changes have occurred.
This article is a work in progress! Check back later in case any changes have occurred.
 Hinamira | IPA | English |
|---|---|---|
| ahana | 'ahana | hello |
| luno'a | 'lunoʔʌ | goodbye |
| ra | 'ra | from |
| im | 'im | to |
| makaha | 'makaha | name of modern dialect of Hinamira (lit. modern) |
| ter | 'tɛr | you |
| kehi | 'kɛhi | morning |
| luno'a | 'lunoʔʌ | goodbye |
| lisa | 'lisa | good |
In the last lesson, we did examine one way of forming an introduction in Hinamira, by using a copula. That's not the usual way of introducing yourself, however - it works, it's just atypical. The other way of introducing yourself makes use of constiuent disolcation. This is when we put important words that grammatically go in one place of the sentence go in the other. (Think, "It bit her, the dog, the girl," which isn't a grammatically correct construction in English, but is a good example of how it works.)
It also uses some pragmatics. If you recall the history of Hinamira, it was spoken by witches, for whom anything said becomes true. However, witches can't speak this truth about themselves. They can say things about themselves, but it's not really the same, and they usually avoid that speaking/bragging about themselves. So instead of our hamfisted "Asama na [name]," witches usually prefer "Ra-[name], ahana," or "from [name], hello."
The informal version of this (i.e., Makahan Hinamira), essentially treats "ahana" as a verb, which is where the dislocation comes in. So the structure for this is "Ra-[name], im-[name of audience], ahana na ter."
When people are ending a conversation, they have a similar difficulty, because saying something like goodbye might lead to their paths never crossing again, which is, generally speaking, entirely undesirable. So a similar workaround is required. The most common way of doing this is to say, "Im-[name], ra-[name of audience]" to convey a similar concept.
M: Ra-Mera, im-ter, ahana na ter.
K: Ra-Kala, im-Mera, ahana na ter.
ra=mera
from=Mera[given name] im=ter
to=2Second person (person)
addressee (you).SGSingular (number)
one countable entity.ANAnimate (gender/class)
alive, moving ahana
hello na
1First person (person)
speaker, signer, etc; I.SGSingular (number)
one countable entity.ANAnimate (gender/class)
alive, moving ter
2Second person (person)
addressee (you).SGSingular (number)
one countable entity.ANAnimate (gender/class)
alive, moving
ra=kala
from=Kala[given name] im=Mera
to=Mera[given name] ahana
hello na
1First person (person)
speaker, signer, etc; I.SGSingular (number)
one countable entity.ANAnimate (gender/class)
alive, moving ter
2Second person (person)
addressee (you).SGSingular (number)
one countable entity.ANAnimate (gender/class)
alive, moving
The biggest takeaway from this short exchange is that introductions can be extremely repetitive. This is true of many examples we'll see - outside of the speech act of introductions, one aspect of politeness is repeating phrases from the previous speaker to affirm that they're true.
↺-na, im- ↺, ↺ na ter.
Practice introducing yourself and greeting others (and saying goodbye). These are good phrases to memorize so you don't have to think about them.
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