I shall now do a series wherein I translate a number of Proverbs into the Dyirbal language of North-East Queensland, Australia.
Proverb 4:20
KJV: My son, attend to my words: incline thine ear to my sayings.
Dyirbal: Guwalgu ŋaygu galbin bagu;
Bagu ŋinu yagin guwalgu!
bagu guwalgu is the Allative Declension of bala guwal, which means voice/everyday sayings.
(The Allative Case indicates movement towards.)*
bala is the Dyirbal equivalent to both the Definite and Indefinite Articles in English, i.e. the AND a.
In Dyirbal, an Article does not have to stand next to its Noun: they can occur completely separately within the same clause.
Naturally, I have placed them at either end of each line to emphasise how God’s voice encompasses all things.
ŋaygu and ŋinu mean my and thine respectively.
galbin is a Noun which means child of a male ego, i.e. a child of the Father.
You could include the (roughly) Masculine Article bayi to specify son, but I omitted this in favour of syllabic symmetry.
I could not find a Dyirbal word for ear. (I only consulted a single grammar.)
Instead, I used the word yagin, which refers to the area between the ear and the eye.
Arguably, yagin is superior to ear:
1. To Hear God and to See God is a distinction which He has created.
2. This is where the Dyirbal believed that the brain resided.
My translation does not include a verb. This is for several reasons:
1. I did not want to.
2. This would probably require a Reflexive verb, and that is a beast which I do not wish to poke at this present time.
3. Each sentence currently has 9 syllables – a Trinity of Trinities.
I did not choose 4:20 for the meme value.
By the time I realised it was already too late.
*Technically, Noun Markers (which I called articles) do not appear in the Allative Case. bagu is actually Dative, but as the Allative and Dative share the Suffix –gu, I have stretched the definition somewhat.
This is beautifully niche. I love it.