Sunrise

Tela speaks it.  Miri speaks it.  Geer speaks it.  If he was sentient,  Teros the bear would speak it.  70,000 Camulians speak it.  And now you can learn to speak it!

Well,  not really.  I never really defined the structure of Camul definitively,  and only a handful of words exist.  What I can offer you is the translations of the Camul phrases which appeared in Issue 4,  and if someone really wants to,  they can figure out the rest of the language themselves while I get back to work on Issue 6.

I’ve been planning this post for a while,  but I wanted to wait until Issue 4 was over.  Blog postings have been pretty infrequent around here  lately,  so now seems like a good time to throw out some Bonus Content.

Enjoy!

Okay,  we’ll start with Tela’s song.

Lapona ma copein

Ileza amusana

Ma padi copeiniya lapona

This is a fairly typical song sung by Camulian children.  I’m assuming that there are more verses,  but Tela’s pretty little and she mostly seems to stick to the first verse.  It translates to the following:

Lapona ma copein Rabbit my friend

Ileza amusana He-is funny

Ma padi copeiniya lapona My little friend+(diminutive) rabbit

Or,  translated less literally,  something like:

The rabbit is my friend

He’s very funny

My little friend,  the rabbit

How cute!  Note especially the word “ileza,”  which is a simple “to be” type word.   Also note the diminutive suffix -iya which attaches to copein (friend) in the last line.  So,  theoretically,  you could say laponiya for “bunny” or perhaps “little rabbit.”  The next time you meet someone from Camulia at the airport you can ask them if that’s grammatical or not.

A couple pages later Tela uses the exclamation Zut! which I simply nicked from French without changing it.  In Camul it’s pretty much equivalent to darn or drat. I don’t think Tela’s parents would have her wash her mouth out with soap if they heard her say this.

Now we jump ahead a bit to meet Tela’s parents.  When Miri first sees Raven,  she says:

Mada!  Arret!

Which translates literally as:

Mada!  Arret! (Exclamation of surprise)! Stop!

Or, to attempt to translate it into the vernacular:

Crap!  Stop right there!

Or something along those lines.

Okay,  a few panels later,  Geer is arguing with Miri:

Mayz la daije! Ileza tra! Jein ama.

Which is:

But the danger! It is much! I+(negation marker) like.

It’s too dangerous! I don’t like it.

Miri responds:

Ils nya nel. Civilein. Sais nya daije.

It’s not as-you-think. Civilian. Isn’t no danger.

It’s not like that.  [They're] civilians. There’s no danger.

Note that in Camul the double-negative is completely grammatical.

Jumping to the next page,  we find the last instance of Camul:

Nouz comp? Yev.

We comply? Yes.

Shall we do as they ask? Yes.

So,  we can form a few  new Camulian phrases with this knowledge.  For purposes of flexibility,  I’m going to say that we can form new adjectives by appending -na.  Therefore daige can become daigena,  “dangerous.”  (Also,  that would mean that amusana is actually derived from amusa,  which probably means “humor”).  Here are a few simple attempts:

Ileza lapona daijena.

He’s a dangerous rabbit. (Note that Camul does not use the indefinite article a.)

Nouz sais nya civileins.

We are not civilians.

Here are a few for you to try.  For convenience,  we will assume that Camul plurals are marked with an -s.  Good luck!

Ma copein ileza civileiniya.

Jei ama lapona.

Arret! La lapona tra daijena!

Nouz ama laponas? Mada!

Sais nya copeiniyas.