Anki: 5
This is a log of my feeble attempt at Zapotec.
And this might really be a feeble attempt because I'm really not sure if I could do this.
As far as I know, there is no dedicated Zapotec-English dictionary online. Heck, even paper dictionaries seem to be largely out of print. Then hell with it, let's do without it. What can possibly go wrong? I'll be back home by Christmas, I'm just going to take a look at the paddies and check out the strange sounds coming out of the basement by myself, don't worry I'm going to be back just fine, and when this war is over...
While the Turkish project is going fine, I kind of started missing the process of decipherment. This time, being unable to look up words is simply going to be a part of the game: something like Spoiler Alert Extra. I know nothing about Zapotec, I just spent some time listening to the NT recordings on bible.com in different indigenous-minority languages and chose one that sounded good to me. The winner was Zapotec. It's going to be Isthmus Zapotec to be more specific.
As shown on the screenshot, I only need to focus on one word per card for now. While I'll try to figure out as many elements as possible, often I'll have to add sentences that I only partly understand. Maybe I'll start a more proper sentence deck later and either re-format or replace these early cards.
Instead of going back and forth and tagging different grammar notes, I'll try to annotate each sentence as I go. Doing that for the Turkish project was fun, but a lot of hassle. Let's see how this goes.
Let's start with just five cards. This alone took me like 2 hours. That's enough for today.
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Runebia'ya lii. Lii nga hombre cha'hui sti Dios.
I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God.
Mark 1:24
lii is used for 2nd person accusative. I don't know how the personal pronouns behave in Zapotec, and I don't know what the nominative looks like. nga appears to be marking identity, and sti is one of the prepositions.
Bigani ne biree de hombre ca.
Hold thy peace, and come out of him.
Mark 1:25
bigani is probably closer to "shut up"; ne was seen enough times that I'm sure it's "and"; de and ca aren't certain. ca is an extremely common word, might even be there just for emphasis. While this is imperative, biree matches the form found in the next sentence.
Ca dxi que pe' biree Jesús Nazaret, ti guidxi sti Galilea
And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee
Mark 1:9
Other than confirming biree above, it seems ti guidxi sti Galilea is a relative clause. I know guidxi is "land", and sti is there again.
Peru qué nudii be lugar niní' ca binidxaba que pa runibiá' ca laabe.
and he suffered not the demons to speak, because they knew him.
Mark 1:34
The first half of the sentences are completely un-parsable to me; binidxaba is demon, so que pa must be "because." The difference between runebia'ya and runibiá' might be either tense or person, or both.
Ne ora bidxela ca laabe, na ca rabi ca laabe
and they found him, and say unto him
Mark 1:37
Another personal pronoun: "him." ne and na seem to be alternating, for reasons I have no idea. The -be in laabe seems to be a morpheme, maybe that's what marks the accusative.