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[edit] Translation
Does anybody know the parsing on that claimed translation? Assuming a West Germanic language with hvil for E. while/G. Weile, I would guess the inscription is supposed to be parsed as: I hini ni hvilpid hini hvilpn. This would make -id and -n pretty typical Germanic verb inflections. But what's that p doing in there? -pid and -pn would be surprising verb endings I think. Could hvilp- be the root word? Are there any potential cognates in other Germanic languages for somehting like (hv/wh/v/f)il(p/b/v/f)? Maybe: whilpan, whilvan, wilvan, vilfid, whilfed, völvon (Volvo!)...??? Am I barking up the wrong tree? Aelffin 13:00, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
- Good question, but I have no idea. You'd need to get hold of Dentschewa's 2006 article. dab (𒁳) 13:10, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
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- Hmmm... the paper isn't available online, so went out on a limb and emailed Emilya Dentschewa to ask. Any response I might get would be a primary source, so not ideal for inclusion in the article, but if I do get a response, I'll post her answer here. Personally, I think hvilp- (if that's the correct parsing) is more likely cognate with "wolf" (cf. PIE *wlp-). That would make Lombardic: I hini ni hvilpid hini hvilpn. Something like "I am not wolfish, I am wolfen" or "I'm not wolflike, I am a wolf". In that case, Lombardic hini would probably be cognate with hine, the Anglo-Saxon accusative case of "he". Or maybe hini functions like German heiße (Swedish heter, Icelandic heiþur) = "my name is", so Hvilpid would be a proper name, Úlfið, like Norwegian Ulfs, or Gothic Wulfilas, giving the sentence a meaning akin to "Wolfgang's not just my name, I really am a wolf!" Not a half bad thing to inscribe on your sword if you ask me... Totally speculative, of course. Aelffin 14:55, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
- "I hini ni hvil pid, hini hvil pn" translates to "I the not time bide, the time am" or rather something like "I don't await eternity, I am eternity." That "hvil" is definite probably converts it from "time" to "eternity". The article "hini" is probably related to Icelandic article "hinn", the verb "pid" is the English verb "to bide" and "pn" is the verb "to be", as German "bin". That it's "pid" and "pn" instead of "bid" and "bn" is common for Langobardic, which often used p where other Germanic languages used b. That "pn" has no vowel is either an error or a way of showing that it was unstressed, or something. This is all just my guesses, though, so don't be too sure about any of it. - Einheri
- interesting, but the hini is rather dubious... even more the "the not time" ("I bide the non-while, the while I am"?) you may be right that this is the gist of the suggestion, but it doesn't work in many ways... --dab (𒁳) 16:05, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
- I agree that it's quite a bit of a stretch. It would be unusual for an otherwise North Germanic article to show up in a West Germanic language, and the "hini ni hvil pid" formation is rather unusual in Germanic languages. Though I can't see how else this research group came up with the "I do not await eternity, I am eternity" translation. It would be nice to have a more thorough explanation from this research group. An afterthought: My splitting of the words may not be totally correct, either. It's quite possible that one letter should be read multiple times, so that it's "Ih hini" rather than "I hini", and so on. That makes it even harder to translate, of course. - Einheri —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.255.200.42 (talk) 13:46, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
- hini as such isn't excluded as a masculine oblique pronoun, I think also Gothic has something like this. The problem is that (a) hvil should be feminine, not masculine, and, more devastatingly, that "hini hvil" should appear in an oblique case first, and then in the Nominative. It is out of the question that the language does not inflect at such an early stage. I suppose we should forget about this proposal. --dab (𒁳) 14:11, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
