Tuesday, December 29, 2009


Christian Lord's Prayer in Biloxi


This is a first, tentative attempt at translating the Christian Lord's Prayer from English into Biloxi.  The black font is of course the Biloxi, the blue is the actual traditional English form of the prayer, and the red is my literal English translation of my proposed Biloxi wording:


Ąkadi nacįtka
Our father in the sky
Our Father who art in Heaven
ayace xi
thy name is sacred
hallowed be thy Name
ithi xi hu
thy house sacred come
Thy Kingdom come
ite ǫǫni, amą itka nacįtka hą.
thy will to do, earth on and sky in
Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.
Nąpi dêê ąkpataaskǫǫ yąkhukąko
day this our bread us give
Give us this day our daily bread
ąksihu kicadkąko ką ksihu ąkicadi
our badness thee forget and badness we forget
And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
te wayą kyąduskąkoni
desire toward do not us take
Lead us not into temptation
ksihu kyąhe yąkįpudahikąko
badness from us protect
But protect us from evil.
Ithi sąhį, ithi phixti, ithi xixti. 
thy house strong, thy house good very, thy house sacred very.
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, 
įkxwi, įkxwi.
always, always.  
forever and ever.
Amen.


2 comments:

Nick said...

Are there translations of the Lord's Prayer into closely related languages, or did you have to do this from scratch?

Dave said...

The only two closely related languages, Tutelo and Ofo, have even less of a data corpus than Biloxi does, so they wouldn't have been much help. So I pieced it together from scratch, hoping I had enough vocabulary to do it - and I did!