Sunday, August 12, 2012

Kleider machen Leute: IVb

Now for the rest of the fourth sentence.
… er sah noch weniger ab, wo das geringste Mittagsbrot herwachsen sollte.
Before breaking it down, I want to rework the source sentence, whose two parts separated by the comma are essentially: "he foresees still less [,] where the most meagre lunch shall sprout from." This is fairly idiomatic. I think I'll rework the first part to "er weiß überhaupt nicht" [he doesn't really know] and the second part to "wo er das geringste Mittagsbrot finden wird" [where he will find the most meagre lunch].

Subject: er = ia
Verb: weiß = mōhio
Adverb: überhaupt = rawa

This is a negative phrase and I'll use a progressive aspect (e … ana) so:
Kāhore rawa ia e mōhio ana …
Breaking down the subordinate clause:

wo [where/at what place] = hea
finden = kimi (my understanding of the words listed in the dictionary for 'find' is that kite is more 'recognise' and kimi is more 'look for')
Mittagsbrot = tina
most meagre = pōhara rawa atu

The subordinate clause takes kei te as verbal particle because it is future [wird], the object takes the particle i, and hea goes to the end, so:
kei te kimi ia i te tina pōhara rawa atu hea
So the sentence becomes:
Kāhore rawa ia e mōhio ana kei te kimi ia i te tina pōhara rawa atu hea.
Joining this to the first part from the previous post:
He kai o te ata ētahi whārangi hukarere anake kua rere ki roto i tōna waha, ā, kāhore rawa ia e mōhio ana kei te kimi ia i te tina pōhara rawa atu hea.
Note, my understanding is that commas are generally used only to separate 'sentences' with the conjunction ā also separated by commas.

Any thoughts?

No comments:

Post a Comment