Song:Mashiara

Mashiara is a song from the Season 1 soundtrack of The Wheel of Time television series.

Lyrics

Verse 1

Old Tongue

Ashandore soufrait, No'ma'mi cuebiyar, Avrunya fel ravid fonnenye.

Official English

Cunning Wisdom, I give you my heart Let us tear down each other's walls

Literal translation

Cunning Wisdom, You give to me my heart, [Let us] tear down our walls [between our] positions

Notes

Ashandore is the word used for Wisdom, not as general wisdom, but specifically as the title for a Two Rivers healer/social leader.

Soufrait = sou- (mind-related root) + frait (strong), or mind-strong, i.e. cunning.

Interestingly, the official English translates this as "I give you my heart", but based on the existing lexicon, no'ma'mi reads as "me you give my", i.e. "(to) me, you give my heart".

Avrunya, ravid, and fonnenye appear only in this song, so we do not have a strong sense of their literal meaning and can only infer them. This introduces a problem because there is a degree of ambiguity about which words to assign to which meanings. Ravad means 'street', so it makes some sense that perhaps ravid would mean "wall" or "barrier". Avrunya we have no real clues on from other words, but from its position relative to fel ravid fonnenye, we can infer it likely is the verb for "tear down". Fonnenye feels similar to fonnai, which means place. The -ye suffix tends to take more "everyday" words and make them more "special" or abstract, so we might suspect a construction like "tear down the walls between (our minds/souls/lives)", and with the connection to fonnai, it may mean something like "position" or "location" as an abstracted kind of place.

This is a weak form of inference and unfortunately without further examples it is difficult to infer accurate meanings.

Verse 2

Old Tongue

Puniya tawele, Gadhavya fel maranya Kiseri trewele. No'noup mah

Official English

May the threads of our fate Be intertwined in a noble braid. All that I seek

Literal Translation

May intertwined [be] threads [of] our fate [in a] noble braid. But only [I] seek

Notes

Puniya seems to be a variant of punia. Tawele shares the ta- root with tamaracad and tam, so we assume it is the participle form for "intertwined". One could make this association instead with gadhavya, which is clearly related to gadhat ("thread"). However, it seems much more likely that gadhavya means 'threads' as in "the threads of our fate", and further, the connection with tamaracad (the pattern) implies a "woven" connection which makes tawele make sense as "intertwined".

However, we also have gadhati, which seems to be the more straightforward plural form of gadhat. One possible resolution is that we are seeing morphological agreement between gadhavya and maranya. Old Tongue is not known for having this kind of morphology but it isn't an impossibility. On the other hand, there may be another explanation we are overlooking.

Kiseri means "noble", trewele braid, so the translation here is straightforward. No'noup is straightforward from known meanings, leaving the interesting mah, which is clearly similar to mahdi, the word for "seeker".

Verse 3

Old Tongue

Domash Kutya a'asa. Ellis sheikar Fel mashi tasu.

Official English

Is the warmth of your touch. A raging sun Is born from our love

Literal Translation

warm feel of you Sun raging our love makes.

Notes

Domash is clearly related to domashita (v. warm). Could interpret as "warm" or "warmth". Kutya means "feel", here rendered as "touch" in official English. A'asa is "of you", so overall we can see a pretty nice literal structure "warm feel of you" (from the last line, "But I only seek the warm feel of you", or "I only seek the warmth of your touch". Ellis sheikar is "sun bright/raging", and fel mashi tasu is "our love makes". Most commonly Old Tongue uses object-verb-subject order, but that order is not absolute and sometimes can be altered, especially for a song where "tasu fel mashi" may sound far less vocally elegant in the melody.

See Also

• Mashiara
• Old Tongue