Lesson 2 - Critical Inference (SPRING 2024)

[Prof. Will Lestrange]

Recall the prompt for this part of Assignment 2:

I showed Basl a few more images; he described each of them with a sentence in Parseltongue. The images are linked below (with small English language descriptions directly underneath serving the role of alt text), along with how Basl described each of them. Note that the English and Parseltongue descriptions are NOT necessarily direct translations of each other!

IMAGE 1:

Image shows a black dog lying under a brown table next to a white bed.
'Tasi doʃe kura fasi stabsle gara sliʃe athne.'

IMAGE 2:

Image shows a red patterned chair on a bent red patterned carpet. On the chair are three mice, holding and looking at a book.
'Isisi naus gira asa ʃira fasi khair ara raʃe sobne.'

IMAGE 3:

Image shows a large, gorgeous python curled up in brown sand. A cute young boy is lying on his back, snuggling and hugging the python.
'Fasi ʃen tina fasi snek ʃena koeslʃe.'

To earn the full ten points, please do the following two things.
1. Pick one word from one of those three images that did not appear in Lesson 2. Post in this thread with an explanation of what you think that word means and why. (DO NOT use later lessons or the class word list as your only explanation!)
2. In the same thread, reply to someone else's post explaining whether or not you agree with their translation. Make sure to choose a different word than the one you chose for the previous part! If no one else has replied to the thread by March 25​ I will make my own post for you to reply to.

[Sophia Williams]

I choose the first image with the sentence: 'Tasi doʃe kura fasi stabsle gara sliʃe athne.'
I think the word “doʃe” means “dog” in English.
I first tried to translate the sentence to English, without looking at the translation of doʃe. It gives: This “doʃe” black that table brown sleep under (English: this black “doʃe” sleeps under that table)
From there, I know that in Parseltongue, the second word of the sentence is usually the subject (between a demonstrative pronoun and an adjective).
Looking at the image, we can see that the dog is mainly back and is sleeping under the table so I can deduce that “doʃe” means “dog” in English.

[Prof. Will Lestrange]

NOTE: This 'response' is intended to give students a chance to earn reply points right away. Each word in the sentence does have an intended Parseltongue meaning, but I'm forgetting that fact for now!

The third image, showing a cute boy very happily hugging a gorgeous snake, was described with the following sentence:
"Fasi ʃen tina fasi snek ʃena koeslʃe." As of now, we know the meaning of the words 'fasi' ('that'), 'tina' ('small'), and 'ʃena ' (large).

So this sentence would be glossed as "That [ʃen] small that [snek] large [koeslʃe]". Based on Parseltongue word order, adjectives are normally immediately preceded by nouns, so [ʃen] and [snek] should refer to the subject and object of the sentence, respectively. I am interested in the remaining word: koeslʃe. It takes the position of the verb of the sentence, and will briefly take a literal approach - the word is pronounced like the word "coil" and the sound "shay"... so I would guess that a literal translation of the word might be something like "to coil someone"/"to wrap someone up in coils". But this doesn't quite match the image - as I don't see any obvious coiling in the picture. Does anyone have further thoughts?

[Katelin Ross]

I chose the second image for this extra credit.
The phrase states: 'Isisi naus gira asa ʃira fasi khair ara raʃe sobne.' I believe the word naus means mice. We learned in lesson one that the sentence structure in parseltongue is a demonstrative pronoun, subject, object, and verb. The subjects in the drawing are the three mice, therefore the word naus means mice.

[Katelin Ross]

I choose the first image with the sentence: 'Tasi doʃe kura fasi stabsle gara sliʃe athne.'
I think the word “doʃe” means “dog” in English.
I first tried to translate the sentence to English, without looking at the translation of doʃe. It gives: This “doʃe” black that table brown sleep under (English: this black “doʃe” sleeps under that table)
From there, I know that in Parseltongue, the second word of the sentence is usually the subject (between a demonstrative pronoun and an adjective).
Looking at the image, we can see that the dog is mainly back and is sleeping under the table so I can deduce that “doʃe” means “dog” in English.

I also believe that the word “doʃe means dog. We have learned that the structure of a parseltongue sentence is very concise and follows the same pattern most of the time. In following the rules of sentence structure of parseltongue, doʃe is in the subject part of the sentence. The subject in the drawing is a dog; therefore, doʃe must mean dog.

[Katherine Laurier]

I chose the second image and the sentence is "Isisi naus gira asa ʃira fasi khair ara raʃe sobne."

I discovered that khair means chair. I did this by first translating the words that are already known, and I got: "[isisi] [naus] [gira] white that [khair] red [raʃe] on". We know that this follows the sentence structure/order and that adjectives (which in this case, we know they are white and red) are preceded by nouns. The word red describes khair, and in the picture, we see a red chair. Additionally, in lesson one, we learned that the letter c is subsituted by k, so we can say that khair means chair.

[Katherine Laurier]

I chose the second image for this extra credit.
The phrase states: 'Isisi naus gira asa ʃira fasi khair ara raʃe sobne.' I believe the word naus means mice. We learned in lesson one that the sentence structure in parseltongue is a demonstrative pronoun, subject, object, and verb. The subjects in the drawing are the three mice, therefore the word naus means mice.

I agree with this! Applying what we’ve learned in lesson one about the sounds of diphthongs and consonant sounds not used in Parseltongue, I found out that the letter m in Parseltongue is not used and we instead use n for that, and au would be pronounced like ‘ow’. When we sound it out, it sounds like mouse, and since there are mice in the picture, we can assume that naus really means mouse.

[Sophia Williams]

I chose the second image for this extra credit.
The phrase states: 'Isisi naus gira asa ʃira fasi khair ara raʃe sobne.' I believe the word naus means mice. We learned in lesson one that the sentence structure in parseltongue is a demonstrative pronoun, subject, object, and verb. The subjects in the drawing are the three mice, therefore the word naus means mice.

I agree with this translation.
In lesson one we learnt about different sounds in Parseltongue and that the pronunciation leads to letters substituting others.
If we take “naus”, we can substitute m to n, “au” is a diphthong usually pronounced as “ow” and the letter c can be replaced by the letter s. If we combined all of those, it gives us a word with a pronunciation very close to the word “mouse”. In the picture we see that the subject must be mice as they are on the chair, so naus must mean mice.