Stālāg Corpus

1 Corinthians 13, 11-12

When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things. At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then [we will see] face to face.

Dded ē nan nār, naho ssē kapān, naho ssē kwentān, naho ssē unkējān tutami; dded ē bardo zr mirlat, nahiggu dusu årrin spĕskiddat. Attō āgam llō tta deurrunĕ ukjana, gnizō aro ssē, ikko kŏw ben kūr ben ukjanarī.

Comments

I chose this text because it has a mystical tone that appeals to me. It was originally proposed as a translation exercise in the CONLANG list, and noted it but never got around to work on it until today (10 July 2003). I’m not a fan of Paul (or whoever passed for him as the writer of Corinthians); in fact I’m not even a Christian, but some parts of the Bible are excellent and inspired.

As an aside, but of interest to me, this phrase was uttered by character Motoko Kusanagi (a.k.a. the Major) in Mamoru Oshii’s magnificent anime movie Ghost in the Shell, an adaptation of the manga by Masamune Shirow. Major Kusanagi doesn’t refer to the message of 1 Corinthians, but to the idea of viewing the world from a different place of conciousness.

I can’t vouch for the exactness of the quote. I just took the proposed text and copied it, with the addition of an elided verb phrase. I don’t know which Bible version this one is and I don’t care. I have a Spanish version where the verses are a little more wordy. In my translation, Paul says he became adulto, an adult, a grown-up; he also speaks of a bad mirror, and not only says that we see things indistinctly, but also that we are forced to guess at them. Whatever the original text said, the version in this page seems appropriately concise.

Notes

1. You probably noticed the series of elliptic verb phrases in the first sentence. Kapān, kwentān, unkējān are all combining forms, bound to the final finite verb, tutami, which means ‘I used to’, ‘I had the custom of’.
2. The literal meaning of unkēj- ‘to reason’ is ‘to build’, figuratively ‘to make up, to create an artifact, to articulate an idea’ (-ēj- makes the basic verb intransitive and agentive).
3. ‘Put aside’, as in English, uses an adverb årrin ‘aside’ (which can also be an adjective) and a finite verb, spĕskiddat, but the latter is not basic -- its stem is the causative of pĕsk- ‘move’ (P-intransitive). The causative voice adds the agentive argument.
4. Attō āgam is an idiomatic expression meaning ‘right now, at present, before anything else that may happen in the future’. It’s a genitive phrase, with attō ‘now-GEN’ and āgam ‘(being at) this side’. Āgam is a deictic that contrasts with īgim ‘that side’ (cf the Latinate cis- and trans-). So the expression means literally ‘at this side of now’.
5. Don’t be surprised by the oblique construction used with ukj-, translated as ‘see’. Non-volitional perception verbs take oblique topics, and they can be better understood as mediopassives; thus llō tta deurrunĕ ukjana ‘we see indistinctly’ is actually ‘to us indistinctly it is shown’, ‘to us... visible’, ‘for us... seen’, etc.