Another Passover song!

Hi! So a while back I made a Quenya translation of the Passover song Ḥad Gadya, and the sages of ElfDict were incredibly helpful with proofreading and copy editing.

Anyway now I'm back and I'm at it again! I'm working on a Quenya translation of another Passover song, Eḥad Mi Yodea', and I'd love to get feedback again.

Here's my draft:

Man ista minë? Istan minë! Min ná i Eru i or menel cemenyë.

Man ista atta? Istan atta! Atta nát i palmat. Min na i Eru...

Man ista neldë? Istan neldë! Neldë nar i atari. Atta nar...

Man ista canta? Istan canta! Canta nar i amillí. Neldë nar...

Man ista lempë? Istan lempë! Lempë nar i parmar axanion. Canta nar...

Man ista enquë? Istan enquë! Enquë nar i hereni ataquetiëo. Lempë nar...

Man ista otso? Istan otso! Osto nar i rí sendarennar. Enquë nar...

Man ista tolto? Istan tolto! Tolto nar i rí osciriennar. Osto nar...

Man ista nertë? Istan nertë! Nertë nar i astar nostiennar. Osto nar...

Man ista cainen? Istan cainen! Cainen nar i axani palmatsë. Nertë nar...

Man ista minquë? Istan minquë! Minquë nar i elelli oloris Yoséfëo. Cainen nar...

Man ista yunquë? Istan yunquë! Yunquë nar i hostari Ihrahél. Minquë nar...

concluding with (in full): Man ista nelcëa? Istan nelcëa! Nelcëa nar i yéni quantoliëo. Yunquë nar i hostari Ihrahél. Minquë nar i elelli oloris Yoséfëo. Cainen nar i axani palmatsë. Nertë nar i astar nostiennar. Osto nar i rí sendarennar. Enquë nar i hereni ataquetiëo. Lempë nar i parmar axanion. Canta nar i amillí. Neldë nar i atari. Atta nar i palmat. Min na i Eru i or menel cemenyë.

Attempted translation for the last verse: "Who knows thirteen! I know thirteen! Thirteen are the years* of maturity. Twelve are the tribes of Israel. Eleven are the stars in Joseph's dream. Ten are the commandments on the two-tablets. Nine are the months until begetting. Eight are the days until circumcision. Seven are the days until the rest-day. Six are the orders of the repetition. Five are the books of the commandments. Four are the mothers. Three are the fathers. Two are the two-tablets. One is the One who is over heaven and earth."

Some notes:

• Some of the words I attempted to coin based on other roots. For instance, *oscirie is the gerund for the neologism oscir-.
• Others, like names. are borrowed based on my admittedly incomplete understanding of Quenya phonotactics. So *Ihrahél is meant to be a borrowing of the Hebrew Yisrael, with influence from the old Latin form Israhel (partially to preserve the distinct /a/ and /e/ vowels, and partially because Tolkein was a Catholic who would be familiar with the Latin form). And *Yoséfëo is from Hebrew Yosef, with word-final anaptyxis to get around the phonotactically illegal coda -f.
• I'm aware that a yén is 144 solar years instead of just one. But elves live for a long time so I thought it seemed odd to claim that the would reach the elven equivalent to bar-mitzvah age at only thirteen solar years.

Some things I'm worried about:

• I am a little bit uncertain as to the right cases to use for eleven through seven. I went with locative for eleven and ten and allative for nine through seven, but if that sounds non-standard please let me know and I'd be happy to change them.
• There are so many different words for "one" in Quenya! I went with minë mostly because it fit closer with the meter (every other number being two syllables), but I did consider using er since it's the root of the word Eru itself, and the whole gist of the song is emphasizing the unity and oneness of God.
• I used the copula since I was considering the numerals to be serving as nominal in the syntax. But I'm not certain if I should, and I am wondering if I should delete all the ná forms. Please let me know what you think!

Thank you so much for your help!

Just wanted to "bump" this post. It's been a bit more than a year but I'd really love to get this checked out if possible

Hello Isaac,

Apologies for the late response. I remember seeing this back when you originally posted it, but never got the chance to get back to it and later forgot altogether; thank you for bumping it again! It's an interesting project.

First, I should note that fitting the translation to the original metre and melody might be tricky, simply because Hebrew is a mostly iambic language, whereas Quenya is largely trochaic. So I'm not gonna comment on metre here.

I'll start off with your numbers. (I'm not sure what you mean with cases though?)

Regarding mine as opposed to min - it's an older attested form, and I'm not completely sure it really works in Tolkien's latest conception, but at the same time it doesn't seem like a particularly big deal to me. I think it's justifiable in your case.

The majority of your numbers are fine (atta, nelde, canta, lempe, enque, otso, nerte, minque, and yunque), though note that you misspelled otso as osto in a couple of places. However, your numbers for 8, 10, and 13 use outdated forms. 8 should be toldo in Tolkien's latest conception, 10 should be quean, and 13 should be nelque.

I don't think you should treat the numbers as nominalised. The English version does that ("four are the mothers" etc.), but not the Hebrew original: this is clearly seen in the verse with the number 2, where it reads ʃnei luχot habrit, using the bound form ʃnei, which would be ungrammatical if the intended meaning was predicative "two are the tablets". So I would indeed omit the copulas throughout (as a side note though, the 3pl form of ná- should be nár with a long vowel).

Furthermore, I would recommend altering the positions of the numbers throughout. Firstly because numerals follow the noun they quantify in Quenya, so "three fathers" = atari nelde, etc. Secondly, in the "who knows" / "I know" phrases, I would recommend (but this is ultimately up to you) to place the number first, as it is in Hebrew (and not as it is in English). In the Hebrew version each one of those questions/answers starts from the number, contrary to normal Hebrew syntax, strongly emphasising the number. I think that also works for the song as a counting song, since the melody emphasises the first syllables of the line as well.

Moving on from the numbers, you are using man for "who", but we have other (and arguably better) options for a subject question word referring to a person: mamo and mane, revealed in PE23. Specifically mamo is also attested very late (1969), which is an advantage, but I think both are fine to use. There are even specifically masculine and feminine variants attested now as well, but those are less useful for this song. An added advantage of using mane / mamo instead of man is that you get another syllable in there, so that the "who knows" phrase ends up with the same 4 syllables as in Hebrew. Mamo ista even fits the stress pattern of Hebrew mi jodea!

For the "I know" phrase, you ended up with the disyllabic istan, which makes it much shorter than the 5 syllable ani jodea in Hebrew. There's not that much you can do about it, but you could for example use the longer pronominal suffix, istanye, and you could also maybe add a "that" as an anaphoric object referring to back to whatever the number refers to. Thus you'd get istanye tana "I know that", which actually also happens to perfectly fit the number of syllables and the stress pattern of the original Hebrew phrase.

Regarding your use of yén in the 13th number, I don't think it's suitable. If your purpose here is to translate the Jewish song into Elvish, then retaining the cultural context is important, especially in this case, seeing as this song is so highly ritualised and part of the Seder tradition; so in this case I'd use loar nelque. If, on the other hand, you envision this as a song that originated in Quenya to begin with, and then evolved into the Hebrew version tied to Judaism, then we run into multiple issues with all the other Jewish references throughout, but even if we ignore these, 13 yéni is not the age of maturity for Elves - 72 loar is.

All of this could be side-stepped entirely, by the way. I did not know until now that there even exists a version of this song where 13 refers to the years until maturity... In the version I am familiar with, which, I think, may be more mainstream, 13 refers to "God's thirteen attributes of mercy". So you could try translating that instead, and thus avoid the question of yéni altogether.

I'll go through the rest number by number.

12: You're using hostar for "tribe", but this is an Early Quenya word (i.e. a word attested in the earliest drafts of Quenya, the earliest conceptual period), and one that IMO cannot be used in later Quenya. The reason is that it seems to have been replaced with hosto, which means "crowd, assembly", so it changed both its form and its meaning throughout its conceptual evolution. I would use nosse here instead, in the sense of "kindred, clan"; its Sindarin cognate was even explicitly glossed as "tribe, people" in one document.

For Israel, I usually adapt it as Irraël. Having ae in hiatus is unattested, but in a loanword might be permissible. I suppose inserting an h to break the hiatus is also possible. I am less convinced by the intervocalic voiceless R, and I do not think the final vowel in a polysyllabic noun could be long, nor could the stress fall on the final syllable in Quenya. Also note that you are missing a genitive case here.

11: I wouldn't use oloris as the locative of olor. For one, the short locative -s may be restricted to temporal uses only in Tolkien's later conception, as we see in multiple examples in PE23. Secondly, even if you use the short locative, the connective vowel should rather be e IMO. I would use oloresse instead. Also I wouldn't use the partitive plural for "stars".

9: nostiennar >> nostienna, there's only a single birth at the end of the 9 months. Though perhaps also consider using a genitive here instead of an allative.

8: You seem to have omitted this one from the last (full) verse. Here, too, I would suggest considering the genitive instead of the allative. I agree with your choice of using rí as the plural of ré btw.

7: sendarennar >> sendarenna; here I agree with the allative if you intend "seven days till the Sabbath", but note that in the original the Aramaic word שַׁבְּתָא can also mean "week", and indeed that is the intended meaning, since it is formulated as a genitive days of the week. So an alternative here would be otsolo rí otso - but this sounds a bit repetitive.

6: ataquetieo >> ataquetiéo, or better yet ataquetiéno or ataquetio. (The same applies to quantolie in 13, if you don't replace it with 13 attributes).

4: amillí >> amilli.

1: Eru should not have a definite article. For the relative clause here I would maybe use ye instead of i; both are possible, but I think ye would sound nicer.

One more thing to note for all of the above. You seem to have translated a somewhat elaborated version of the song, in which some of the items are explained. For example, in your version you have "twelve tribes of Israel" and "eleven stars of Joseph's dream", whereas in the Hebrew/Aramaic version these are simply "twelve tribes" and "eleven stars". The shorter forms used in the Hebrew version seem rather essential to me for singing it.

I hope these comments help you refine your work! Feel free to consult me if you have any questions.

Thank you so much for your detailed analysis! Based on your suggestions, I've made a new version:

• Minë mamo ista? Minë istanye tana! Minë ná Eru ye or menel cemenyë.
• Atta mamo ista? Atta istanye tana! Palmat atta. Minë ná Eru…
• Neldë mamo ista? Neldë istanye tana! Atari neldë. Palmat...
• Canta mamo ista? Canta istanye tana! Amilli canta. Atari…
• Lempë mamo ista? Lempë i stanye tana! Parmar axanion lempë. Amilli…
• Enquë mamo ista? Enquë istanye tana! Hereni ataquetiéno enquë. Parmar…
• Otso mamo ista? Otso istanye tana! Rí sendarennar otso. Hereni…
• Toldo mamo ista? Toldo istanye tana! Rí oscirion toldo. Rí sendarennar…
• Nertë mamo ista? Nertë istanye tana! Astar nosto nertë. Rí oscirion…
• Quean mamo ista? Quean istanye tana! Axani palmatsë quean. Astar…
• Minquë mamo ista? Minquë istanye tana! Eleni oloresse minquë. Axani…
• Yunquë mamo ista? Yunquë istanye tana! Nossi Irrahëlo yunquë. Eleni…
• Nelquë mamo ista? Nelquë istanye tana! Quettar Eruva lissëo nelquë. Nossi Irrahëlo yunquë. Eleni oloresse minquë. Axani palmatsë quean. Astar nosto nertë. Rí oscirion toldo. Rí sendarennar otso. Hereni ataquetiéno enquë. Parmar axanion lempë. Amilli canta. Atari neldë. Palmat atta. Minë ná Eru ye or menel cemenyë.

Some notes on changes:

• To translate "attributes of mercy" I aimed for "the words of divine grace."
• I deleted Yoséfëo, but kept oloresse, because there are obviously a lot more than eleven actual stars. Most translations of Eḥad Mi Yodea include more clarification than the terse, almost crux-y "Hebramaic" of the original song.
• Decided to keep sendarennar since the usage of שבתא to refer to the week was always synecdoche from "days until the sabbath" and it sounds better to my ear than repeating the root "seven" — there's a reason the original doesn't go שבעה ימי שבועתא even though שבועה is a much more common word for "week."
• Even though I removed most of the copulas, I kept it for God, because basically every translation does, including the Ladino which says uno es el criador, not criador uno — even though it drops a lot of the other copulas. I'll note that many other traditional translations do at least sometimes include the copula (Yiddish fir zenen di imes, dray zenen di ovos, tsvey zenen di likhes), and since Hebrew and Aramaic are copula-drop languages the lack of copulas in the original doesn't necessarily mean they aren't implied. But nevertheless, I agree that poetically it reads better without it in this text.

I hope this looks good to you! My main question now is: should I add i back in before all the nouns? They feel a bit clunky but they might be necessary for the syntax. After all, it's not four arbitrary mothers, it's the four specific mothers.

The Hebrew version simply has "four mothers", without a definite article, so I think it can work well enough without it in Quenya as well; Quenya, in general, is much more conservative with definite articles than Hebrew is.

Regarding the copula, it is true that there is no copula in Hebrew (in present tense), I wouldn't even call it copula-dropping, it's simply absent altogether. However, whether predication is intended is rarely, if ever, ambiguous. Speaking as a native speaker and as a linguist, IMO none of the lines, save maybe for #1, has the noun after the number as a predicate (i.e. equivalent to having a copula).

Note that sendarennar still shouldn't be plural, it should be sendarenna.

Also note that the diaeresis in Irrahël should not be there. Other diaereses are optional too, but this one is just unnecessary in any case.

Thank you so much for all your help! This will be uploaded onto Open Siddur probably some point after yamim noraim once I have time to do a full transcription into Tengwar etc.

Nai menuvalve lissë loasse!