All right, time for another lesson on/crack at Oirata! Moving on to the second sentence:
Leen lapai neene Maukou - OK, this part is pretty straightforward. "Sky big name Maukou," i.e. "the big sky's name was Maukou." (OK, they say "the name of the large sky," but whatever. Same thing!
).
But then the next part of that sentence is
umajauele tie neeneta Huimau. What do
tie and that -
ta at the end of
neeneta mean?
Hmm...not sure about
tie yet, but apparently,
ta is some sort of reciprocal? But this
ta must be different. 'Name (as a noun)' + 'each other' + Huimau doesn't seem to make much sense.
Well, OK, finally found a clue for
tie. According to that dictionary,
ululu tie a ate means 'pisau ini tajam' ('this sharp knife'),
a ate means 'tajam' ('sharp'), and
ululu means 'pisau' ('knife'). So
tie must mean 'this'.
And it looks like -
ta might actually be a suffix indicating possession, but it goes on the possessum, not the possessor. (I think that might be pretty typical for Papuan languages, actually). According to the dictionary (again
),
antte neneta Nazar means "Nama saya Nazar" (my name is Nazar), and
ante means 'saya, aku' (both meaning 'I/me'. It's also in the song!
). So, "earth this its name Huimau."
Next sentence:
Wadu wanat tina'a ete-modo tarumodora tie onhali. "In those times no plants were living yet." I think
wadu means 'time'...
No, wait, it actually means 'sun' (according to that article on the Papuan languages of Kisar and Timor). Or maybe it really means 'day' (according to the dictionary, which says 'hari' in Indonesian).
Or maybe it's both; who knows?
Oh, wait, apparently
watu means 'sun', and
wadu means 'day'. (It seems that the <d> actually represents a voiceless retroflex stop, whereas the <t> is alveolar). I guess that makes more sense lol.
I couldn't tell at first what
wanat meant, but I found this paper, which explained it:
https://encrypted.google.com/url?sa=t&r ... 8121,d.aWcSo
wanat means 'night' (see p. 14/25 of that document, or just search for "wanat" in the paper). According to the paper,
wadu wanat 'day and night' is one of a few lexical pairs that are identical to ones used in Leti, an Austronesian language spoken a bit to the east of Kisar (where Oirata is spoken). In Leti, the corresponding expression is
lera mela. Pretty cool, huh?
Now, what about the next word,
tina'a? Well, under
watu, the dictionary says
ina watu tina'a (shouldn't that be
wadu?
) means 'hari ini' ('today'). I have no idea what the
ina is doing, because the dictionary says that means 'apa' ('what') or 'pertanyaan' ('question'); maybe the sentence really means 'what day is it today?' Anyway, this leads me to believe that
tina'a, like
tie, means something like 'this'. Maybe it's just
tie with the last vowel deleted and some (locative? I dunno) suffix -
na'a added?
Or maybe it means 'these'.
Anyway,
ete apparently means 'tree'. And apparently,
modo means 'child'. So a plant is a "tree-child"!
Now, what does the next word,
tarumodora, mean? We already know that
modo means 'child'. The dictionary says
taru means 'tali' ('rope'). Hmmm...
OK, whatever. The last word we have now is
onhali. What does that mean?
Well, the dictionary says
onhale means 'not yet', so maybe that's what it really is. So I guess
wadu wanat tina'a ete-modo tarumodora tie onhali = day + night + those + tree-child/plant + rope-child-SUBJ/TOPIC(?) + this + not.yet...? Well, that's my guess.
The next line is
ha horia o'o nunu tapu lapai ta lause. I'm not going to do an exhaustive analysis of that yet, but we already know that
o'o means 'and' and that
lapai means 'big'.
Horia (as we can see a few lines further down in the text) means what the text calls 'parna', and
nunu is what it calls 'waringin'. I have no idea what either of these are supposed to be; I've been assuming they're some sort of local plants or something, but who knows? I'm guessing
tapu means 'seed(s)'. Finally, according to the dictionary,
ha means 'father'!
Not sure that's what it means here!
Meh, might as well finish off that sentence.
Lause means 'to live'; the dictionary also says it can mean 'to grow' ('tumbuh', in addition to 'hidup'/'(to) live'). So I guess
ha means 'only' or 'except' or something.
And yeah, it looks like "parna" and "waringin" are indeed Indonesian plants of some sort. Apparently, a "waringin" is something like a banyan tree.