Papotement

Papotement
Gnun Tongo
Pronunciation	[ɲun ˈto.ŋo]
Native to	Carucere
Native speakers	~500,000
Language family	Gaullican-based creole Asterias Arucian West Papotement
Writing system	Solarian using the Papotement alphabet.
Official status
Official language in	Carucere
Regulated by	National Academy of Papotement
Language codes
ISO 639-3	par
Location map of Carucere, where Papotement is spoken

Papotement (IPA: [pa.pɔ.te.mɑ̃]), locally rendered as Paputemanti (IPA: [paputeˈmanti]), commonly known as Gnun Tongo (IPA: [ɲun ˈto.ŋo]), is a Gaullican-based creole language spoken by over half a million people in the Asterias. It is the most widely spoken language in Carucere, serving as the unofficial national language of the country.

Papotement has its origins from a basic pidgin language spoken between Bahians and Gowsa workers in the mid to late 19th century, but the modern form of the language originates from the post-war period during 1940s and 1950s. The vocabulary of Papotement mostly originates from Gaullican, but its grammar draws influence from the Moutagnar creole and the Ziba language spoken by gowsa workers. Gaullican has played a major role in the creole since the mid-19th century, introducing the majority of the vocabulary as well as parts of the language's grammar, and methods of pronunciation. Despite its relatively recent emergence, the language has diverged significantly from standard Gaullican in part due to the complex array of languages influencing it.

While Gaullican still remains the language of prestige, Papotement is the lingua gaullica of the Republic of Carucere. Carucereans tend to speak Papotement at home and in media; Gaullican is limited to administration and educational purposes. Although Carucereans are of Satrian, Southeast Coian, Bahian, and Euclean origins, Papotement has gradually replaced the ancestral languages of most of the population to become the primary home language of the country.

Etymology

The word papute originates from Gaullican papoter ("to chat, chatter"). The word papotement is formed by adding the noun-forming suffix -ment. The word is ultimately derived from a colloquial term by Gaullican colonial administrators and settlers to refer to the pigin spoken between Bahian and Gowsa workers in the late 19th century. It was originally used to differentiate it from the preexisting Moutagnar creole language spoken by Bahians, then known as Carucerean Creole by the Gaullicans. The term papotement continued to be used as the pigin developed into a full language. As the Moutagnar creole was subsumed into Papotement, some now use "Carucerean Creole" to refer to the latter.

The language's most commonly name used by native speakers is Gnun Tongo (lit. "New Tongue"), which references its status and origin as a newer language. Other native names for Papotement include Karuku Tongo and Paputemanti.

History

Estmere was the first Euclean power to settle the island in the early 16th century after the destruction of the Karukera Confederacy. The decimation of the majority of the native population resulted in only a small portion of Papute vocabulary deriving from the Nati language. During the 300 year rule of the colony, the population largely consisted of Euclean settlers and soldiers with some slaves. The language that developed was based on Estmerish, but differed greatly from the language spoken by the slave owners. This pidgin language eventually became the native language of the children of the slaves, where it developed into a creole.

Under Gaullican rule from 1724 to 1770, they rebuilt the plantation economy by importing additional slaves from across Southern Bahia to replace the slaves that escaped. There was only minor Gaullican influence on the creole as Gaullican rule was brief, the size of the native Gaullican settler population on the island was small, the enslaved population was segregated from the colonissts, and the slaves lacked any kind of formal education. The new slaves learned the Estmerish-based creole from recaptured Maroons or those who never escaped, and adopted it as their main language.

After the Asterian War of Secession, Estmere once again took control of the island. The abolition of slavery in the 1790s led many Bahians to leave the plantations and form their own communities, where the creole language continued to evolve. Meanwhile, splits in the Amendist Church in Estmere in the early 19th century, led to several evangelical and fundamentalist churches seeking to convert the free Bahian population to Amendism. As part of their mission, they also taught Estmerish to them to create an educated class of Estmerish speakers. Despite their attempts to suppress the Moutagnar creole, it continued to be spoken by the population.

Gaullica regained control of the island after the War of the Triple Alliance in 1854. Gaullica once gain sought to establish a plantation economy, but they could no longer depend on slavery. Instead indentured workers from modern day Dezevau known as gowsa were brought to replace the freed slaves and became the plurality population on the island by the 1870s. Unlike the Bahian slaves before them who spoke a multitude of languages, the gowsas universally used Ziba to communicate with each other. As a growing number gowsas were freed from their indentureship contracts, they began settling down and establishing communities across Carucere, where they began interacting with the pre-existing Bahian communities.

Consistent but limited Language contact between the two cultures led to the creation of a pidgin language to communicate with each other. It is considered to be earliest modern form of Papotement, albeit in simple nascent form.Individual reports of communication between the Gowsas and Bahians using the pidgins date to as early as the 1870s. Colonial administrators continued to discourage the use of any language other than Gaullican, but the pidgin remained the main method of communication. Although it did not develop into a creole and remained a simple pidgin, it saw widespread use for communication the two groups primarily for the purpose of business.

The end of the Great War and the collapse of Gaullican rule on the island led to significant hardship for the nonwhite population. The post-war reconstruction into a semi-autonomous district led to numerous and sustained interactions between Bahians and Gosas for the first time, where they used the Papotement pidgin to communicate with each other. Most pivotal for the development of modern Papotement was reintroduction of nonsegregated schooling and early versions of day-care for all children. For young Bahian and Gosa adolescents, school was often the first time that many young people from different linguistic backgrounds interacted for long periods of time. To communicate, the students used the pidgin in school where it began to spread and develop rapidly with more complex grammar rules and new vocabulary. A teacher named Roch Mathieu, who worked in a school in Carucere during the 1940s, wrote:

The next generation of children [in Carucere] speak a new language. The Gowsas and Bahians speak different languages but children have picked up a little of each language and have created a new tongue. Now they don't speak the languages originally spoken by their parents or the Gaullican we are supposed to teach them.

By the late 1940s, nearly all Bahian and Gosa children born in Carucere had exposure to Papotement during their childhood, at which point it was developing into a fully fledged language. The language faced widespread dissaproval from older generations from all ethnic groups, especially by the Gaullican speaking elite, but the use of the language had become too widespread among young adults. The use of the language was often discouraged, but it emerged as a major part of the Arucian Naissance, when a new generation of political activists used Papotement to communicate. Papotement quickly became a symbol of Carucerean opposition and identity among Carucerean nationalists. As older generations were largely unfamiliar with the language, Papotement words and phrases were used as secret codes by them to conduct their activities. Various versions of Karuke Cheri Peji, the country's national anthemn were written in Papotement around this time.

As the next generation of people were raised in Papotement, the language continued to change and began influencing the other languages on Carucere. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Moutagnar Bahian creole was gradually subsumed by Papotement and many young Dezevauni and Kachai people started favoring the language instead of Ziba. The language received additional support when President Jean Preval embraced the language as part of his progressive policies. The National Academy of Papotement, created to regulate the language, was founded in 1977. The Academy published the first dictionary starting in 1978, establishing definitions and pronunciations for many common words and phrases. However orthography remained unregulated, and spelling remained disparate. The Carucerean government began supporting an orthographic reform in 1980, with a system that generally follows Gaullican but eliminates silent letters and reduces the number of different ways in which the same sound can be written. It was formally codified in 1996 with the publication of the fourth edition of the Diksione Paputemanti.

Papotement has been the subject of a great amount of academic research. There is significant disagreement to when Papotement developed from a simple pidgin into a full language, with studies proposing dates from as early as the 1940s to as late as the 1970s. Due to its recent emergence, Papotement has been intensively studied by academics studying language formation. It has also been the subject of many comparative studies, comparing how Papotement developed with other creoles such as Western Imaguan Creole.

Origin

Papotement is unique compared to other Asterian creole languages due to its very recent emergence and influences from an array of different languages. The Gaullican language is generally considered to be the superstrate, despite it not being the primary language of the Bahians or the Gowsas, due to its high prominence and widespread use in Carucere's society since the 1860s. The Moutagnar creole and Ziba, along with Estmerish to a lesser extent, are the substrate languages of Papotement and are adstrates to each other as they share the same lower status compared to Gaullican. The complex interactions of these languages led to the formation of a pidgin in the late 19th century and the full creole in the 20th century.

Moutagnar creole

The direct predecessor of Papotement is the Moutagnar creole or the Old Bahian creole (OBC) that developed during the 16th and 17th centuries. During Estermish rule, colonizers produced tobacco, cotton, and sugar cane on the islands. Throughout this period, the population was made of roughly equal numbers of white workers, settlers, free people of colour, and slaves. The slaves spoken an Estermish based creole. The majority of the Bahian slaves brought to the colony spoke a Southern Bahian language, particularly the Rwizi and Sisulu languages. It began as a pidgin spoken primarily by enslaved Bahians from various tribes in Suriname, who often did not have an language in common. As a result, a pidgin was formed from which a distinct creole emerged by the late 16th century. Known as the Bahian Creole, the majority of its vocabulary was derived from Estmerish, but its grammatical structure contained many features similar to South Bahian languages. These included some agglutinative features, but it was already much more analytical than its origin languages.

After Gaullica seized the colony in 1715, they sought to rapidly expand sugar production. The sugar crops needed a much larger labor force, which led to an increase in slave importation from Bahia. During this period an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 Bahian individuals were enslaved and brought to Saint-Brendan, nearly doubling the slave population. Although the Gaullican colonial authorities interacted very little with the slaves, the Estmerish creole was significantly influenced by the introduction of the Gaullican language which contributed many loan words. A similar debate exists on whether Papotement should be classified as an Gaullican-based creole or an Estmerish-based one. These arguments generally mirror the points of the aforementioned debate; similarly the general consensus that it is a Gaullican-based creole.

Gaullican

The Gaullican language arrived in Carucere after the seizure of the islands in 1721, where it would be used as the main language of administration during the two periods of Gaullican colonial rule from 1721 to 1770 and 1854 to 1935, during the Arucian Federation from 1935 to 1945, and under the United Provinces from 1945 to 1953. During this time, the language has a significant impact on the development of the creole, especially in vocabulary; over 80% of the lexicon is of Gaullican origin. Gaullican has directly and indirectly influenced Papotement vocabulary.

Estmerish

During Estmerish rule of Carucere from 1770 to 1855, evangelical and fundamentalist churches arrived to Carucere following major denominational splits in 1811 and 1844. Alongside converting the free Bahians to Amendism, they sought to teach them Estmerish to create an educated class to further increase conversions. The greatest influence of Estmerish in Papotement is through loanwords, especially for words of a religious nature such as "Lord". While most Papotement words of Estmerish origin were borrowed from the Bahian creole, which in turn derived some of their lexicon from Estmerish, some words were directly loaned from Estmerish.

Ziba

Ziba was the main language spoken by gowsa workers imported to Carcuere in the mid to late 19th century. The gowsas were subject to gaullicanization efforts as part of the Holistique movement, which pressured them to adopt the Gaullican language. Thus by the time Papotement began to form, Ziba in Carucere was undergoing partial creolization. The majority of Ziba's contribution to the creole is in grammar, especially grammatical markers and sentence structure. In additional Papotement has many Ziba loanwords for concepts and items that originate from Southeast Coius.

Other Gowsa langauges

Although gowsas overwhelmingly spoke Ziba, the indentured workers were imported from a vast geographical area and usually spoke other languages. These languages include Kachai, Pelangi, Kabuese, and other South Bahian languages. However these languages gradually fell out of use as they primarily used Ziba to communicate and only has a minor influence in Papotement, although many loan words originates from these languages.

Varieties

Basic diagram of the Papotement ethnic dialect continuum.

Standard Papotement is defined by the Diksione Paputemanti and the Papotement Guide both published by the National Academy of Papotement. Standard Papotement was declared the national language in 1996 during the reforms throughout the 1990s and early 2000s that standardized its grammar, spelling, and pronunciation. However the National Academy has stated that the standardized language does not replace the various dialects of Papotement and was only standardized for use in formal situations such as education and media. However in the past few decades standardisation, mass media, and education has had a noticeable impact on the diversity and depth of the language's dialects which has caused some controversy and discussion.

Dialects

Unlike many other languages, Papotement's dialects correspond to Carucere's ethnic groups and the socioeconomic status of the speaker rather than geographic location. Carucere's size and population density means that dialects cannot be meaningfully distinguished from each other and instead exist on a continuum. Papotement forms a multi-polar dialect continuum between Carucerean Ziba, Moutagnar creole, Estmerish, and Gaullican, corresponding to the country's ethnic and religious groups. Nevertheless four broad categories can be ascertained determined by the amount of influence of their parent languages has on the dialect. Influences largely manifest as distinct accents and the use of loanwords and slang from parent languages, which increase the greater the influence is. At the most extreme examples, the dialect is mutually intelligible with its parent language, even if standard Papotement is not. In recent decades, linguists have argued that Moutagnar creole was not completely subsumed by Papotement, but continues to exist as the main dialect spoken by Bahians, especially by the Maroons.

In addition, socioeconomic status adds another dimension to the language's dialect. Generally wealthier and more educated speakers of Papotement speak a dialect closer to Standard Gaullican, while less wealthy speakers without higher education much less so. As with the ethnic dialects, they exist on a dialect continuum without distinct differences. The two continuums together form a complex variety of dialects across Carucere.

Phonology

Consonants

Papotement has a total of 21 consonants largely drawn from its source languages, mainly Gaullican, Moutagnar creole and Ziba, but it has developed a distinct inventory unique to the language. Notable features include distinguishing between voiced and unvoiced consonants, the usage of affricates, and three different rhotic consonants, although two are only typically distinguished. The phonology described here is for standardized Papotement; the language's distinct dialects include greater phonological influences from its substrate languages.

Consonant phonemes

		Bilabial	Labio-dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar / Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Plosive	Voiced	b		d		g
	Voiceless	p		t		k
Nasal		m		n	ɲ	ŋ
Fricative	Voiced		v	s			ʁ
	Voiceless		f	z	ʃ			h
Affricates					d͡ʒ
Tap/Trill				r
Approximant			ʋ		j
Lateral Approximant				l

Vowels

Papotement has seven vowels, not including three nasal vowels; /ɑ̃/,/ɛ̃/, /õ/.

Vowel phonemes

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Close-mid	e		o
Mid		ə
Open	a		ɒ

Papotement has fourteen diphthongs, two vowels in a single syllable that form one sound. Papotement diphthongs are based on Gaullican and Ziba diphthongs.

Diphthongs
IPA	Papotement orthography
ao	ao
oa	oa
ia	ia
ua	oua
ai	ai
oi	oi
io	io
uo	ouo
au	auo
ou	oou
iu	iou
oiu	ui
iːə	iò
uːə	uò

Phonotactics

Papotement allows a syllable structure of (C)³V(C)³. The largest consonant cluster allowed in Papotement are three consonants like in Estmerish.

Grammar

Papotement is an analytical language like most creoles, but it features a greater degree of grammatical complexity due to the highly agglutinative nature of Ziba. It has a subject-verb-object (SVO) word order reminiscent of its parent language. The language's structure is synthesis of simplified grammatical patterns such as verb conjugation and copula dropping, with Ziba's grammatical complexity with the inclusion of complex noun phrases and inflection. Papotement's sentence structure is closely aligned with Gaullican grammar.

Nouns and adjectives

In Papotement, nouns feature inflection for pluralization, possession, and case marking. The influence of Ziba's noun and adjective compounding and affixation results in complex noun phrases. For all other cases, grammatical markers are placed next to noun, such as creating adjectives from nouns. For example, the adjective-forming suffix -bo ("made of", "full of") in Ziba is used in Papotement as an general marker in front of the noun. Compare Ziba zuanibibo ("made of sandstone") with Papotement bo gre ("[made] of sandstone"). Adjectives and modifiers precede head nouns for descriptive precision. Papotement's definite article la is placed after the noun. The Papotement indefinite article en is placed before the noun.

Pronouns

Papotement's singular and plural personal pronouns lacks grammatical gender entirely. For example so , which also functions as possessive pronoun, is equivalent to "his/her". Papotement also has the pronoun, li which can cover all plural pronouns and the third-person singular pronoun, regardless of case or gender. Thus li can be translated as "he, she, it, him, his, her, and hers" depending on the context. Reflexive personal pronouns are created by agglutinating the suffix mem (same) to a pronoun; to ("you") tomem ("yourself").

Number and plurals

Nouns do not change according to grammatical number; whether a noun is singular or plural is usually determined only by context. For instance, bann vit is "many books"; while vit individually implies a singular book, including the term bann ("many") implies there are multiple books. The particle grup (from groupe) is sometimes placed to create a plural word for emphasis or if a plural word cannot be determined by context. The Papotement indefinite article en also is the number one, so "one book" and "a book" are both translated as en vit in creole.

Demonstratives

The word sa ("this" "that") is used as a demonstrative after the noun that it modifies. It may also be used as a pronoun, replacing a noun.

Verbs

Verbs in Papotement are typically not inflected for tense, number, or person, but for emphasis instead. The conjugations are usually derived from Gaullican and attached on stems from other languages. For example, re- ("again") in regive mwa so chosjr (give me back my shoes). Tense is determined by an appropriate grammatical marker placed next to a noun or pronoun. No markers are needed to indicate present tense, but Papotement's three additional tenses are; pe marking progressive aspect, pou marking the future tense, and ti marking the past tense. Tense markers can be combined to create combination markers to create more complex phrases. For example, combining the markers ti with pe creates the marker ti pe, which signifies an ongoing event but in the past. Two major verbs are ena ("there is", "there are", "have") and pena the negative of the former. Ex: Ena en vit ("There is a book"), Pena vit (There is no book). Adverbs and participles are formed using the same system. Examples are the negative marker pa, which changes the verb's meaning to the negative and the marker ju equivalent to Estmerish "-ly"; both are placed before the word it modifies.

Reduplication is one of the defining features of Papotement; where a whole word is repeated, or a part of a word, or a word of similar meaning is inserted after to modify the meaning of a word. It is commonly used to indicate frequency or intensity of the action indicated by the original verb stem. Typically a whole word is repeated or a word of similar meaning is inserted after the word it modifies. For short words, a part of the original word is commonly affixed instead. For example, frape means "to hit", frape frape means "to hit repeatedly". In addition it can be used to emphasize the meaning of the repeated word in the context that it is used. For example So kouri kouri vit ("He runs fast") means that he has been consistently running fast, while So kouri vitvi ("He runs fast") emphasizes the speed of the running. Words can be repeated more than twice to further emphasize the meaning, although this can become cumbersome and is typically only used for comedic effect.

Copula

There is only one copula in Papotement, the word ete which is only used when referring to a temporary state or location of a person or object. The copula is omitted when referring to the inherent qualities of an object or person, forming in essence a stative verb form. Copulas in all other situations are largely absent in Papotement.

Syntax

Papotement largely uses subject–verb–object word order. The language allows complex noun phrases, which can include long relative clauses, within a SVO sentence. This is similar to Ziba grammar with grammatical markers taking the place of conjunctions and compounding. Paoptement most commonly uses direct object-nun construction ("The woman gave her son the money.") than indirect object constructions ("The woman gave the money to her son."), although the latter is used when the indirect object is the focused element. Relative clauses are created with the marker sa ("that") placed in front of the clause.

Lexicon

About half of Papotement's vocabulary is derived from Gaullican from the late 19th century, albeit with changes in pronunciation, spelling, and morphology. Nevertheless the majority of these words remains largely intelligible with Standard Gaullican. A few words originate from the first period of Gaullican colonial rule, but the vast majority come from the second period of. The other half of Papotement vocabulary largely originates from its two main substrate languages, the Moutagnar creole and Ziba.

Moutagnar creole's vocabulary originates from 16th century Estermish and thus often maintains archaic definitions and pronunciations. For example, the "silent" consonants found in the consonant clusters of modern Estmerish in words as knot, gnat, and sword continued to be pronounced by Moutagnar creole and left an influence in modern Papotement. Another notable contribution is bledi from Estmerish "bloody", although it is only used as an intensifier and completely lacks any profane connotations. Some loanwords originate from the second period of Estmerish rule due to basic education by Admendist churches, but the majority originates from the first period. The majority of Moutagnar vocabulary in Papotement are for everyday objects and other simple concepts.

Ziba is the third largest source of words in Papotement. The majority of these loanwords were concepts, objects, and ideas introduced by the gowsas and their descendants from their place of origin. These include contributions such as Papotement veng from Ziba venge ("breadfruit"), dobo mede from daubo mhedhui ( "congee"), zibu ("several"), and debu ("many; more than twenty") from dhebu ("twenty" "many"). Many Ziba words were directly borrowed with the root word and affix to form whole words in Papotement. Examples include bidui ("side street" "alley") from bi- ("little") -dui ("street"). In addition many grammatical markers originate from Ziba grammatical suffixes, such as Papotement zua (in the likeness of) from Ziba -jua ("-like").

There are minor influences from Southern Bahian languages, such as makutu from eOnikhuma makhwatta "(running sore)" and other Southeast Coian languages, such as kawo niòu ("sticky rice") from Kachai ເຂົ້າໜຽວ (khao niāu). Other minor sources include Champanian, Nati, and various regional languages.

Due to its complex history, many Papotement words that originate from different languages share similar definitions. For example, the Papotement words rele ("to call by name") and heil ("to greet informally") both have similar meanings but are derived from different languages; the former comes from Gaullican héler ("to call over loudly") and the latter from Estmerish hail ("to greet").

Orthography

Papotement is written in the Solarian script with a phonemic orthography with highly regular spelling, except for proper nouns and foreign loanwords. According to the official standardized orthography, the Papotement alphabet is composed of 32 letters.

Consonants Papotement orthography IPA b b ch ʃ d d f f g ɡ h h j d͡ʒ k k l l m m n n gn ɲ ng ŋ p p r ʁ/r/ɾ s s t t v v z z Semivowels w ʋ y j

Vowels Papotement orthography IPA a a e e i i o o ò ə ou ɒ u u Nasal vowels an (when not followed by a vowel) ã en (when not followed by a vowel) ɛ̃ on (when not followed by a vowel) õ

Sociolinguistics

Although both Gaullican and Papotement are official languages in Carucere, Gaullican has long enjoyed greater social status and is main language in government, business, and education. While Papotement is considered to be the low language in the diglossic relationship between the two languages in society, the vast majority of Carucereans speak the language on a daily basis, especially in informal situations. The government has promoted the use of Papotement in media; The Strait, Carucere's paper of record, publishes its primary edition in Gaullican and Papotement. However in other formal situations, Gaullican is highly encouraged; these situations is one of the few instances when the use of Papotement is stigmatized.

Literature and culture

Carucere's national anthem, "Karuke Cheri Peji", is in Papotement. The newspaper The Strait Times publishes an edition in the language and the left-wing Diario is published only in Papotement.

Zegodu letter

The oldest surviving written text in modern Papotement is a short letter dated from 1946, discovered in a private book collection in Pointe Henri in 2007. The letter was sent by a young Gosa woman named Zegodu to her friend Elise, inviting her to her birthday celebration. Although their lineage can be traced from their modern descendants, little else is known about the two women or their relationship to each other. When the letter was written, Papotement was still undergoing significant changes and thus the letter contains archaic vocabulary, spelling, and grammar. The letter is currently stored at the National Library in Jameston and a reproduction is on display at the National Museum of History.

Original text		Modern Papotement		Gaullican		Estmerish
Mi tre cheri kamarad, mo ju tied ju invite tu célébrer de mo aniveser le 14 Septanm. J’attends avid impatience ta visite, car elle radr pou ma jou beaucoup plu plu agréable. Mi heil debu kamarad faire la fête midi jeme wi kontan heureux jeme. Bonjour ta maman de ma part, ahn à toute ou famille. Mon papa ahn ma maman les send lur salutations. Ziska Ou Dieu te donne la santé. Au revoir, orevwa cheri.		Mi tre reme kamarad, Mo ju tied ju envite pur selebr de mo aniveser 14 Septanm. J'atadr avid impatience to vizit, car el radrpou lizour boku plu plu agreyab. Mi notifie pou debu kamarad tu fete pou de midi jeme wi kontan jeme. Bonzour to mama pur mi, ahn all ou fanmi. Mi papa ahn mama dehn send lurz salut. Ziska le sa a pouvwa Ou Dieu donn to sante. Au revoir, orevwa cheri.		Ma très chère amie, je t’invite chaleureusement à célébrer mon anniversaire le 14 septembre. Mi attends avec impatience ta visite, car elle rendrait ma journée beaucoup plus agréable. Je vais appeler beaucoup d’amis pour faire la fête de midi jusqu’à ce qu’on soit le plus heureux. Dis coucou à ta maman de ma part, et à toute ta famille. Mon papa et ma maman les envoient leurs salutations. D’ici là, que ton Dieu te donne la santé. Au revoir et à bientôt chérie.		My dearest friend, I warmly invite you to celebrate my birthday on 14 September. I eagerly await your visit, for it would make my day much more enjoyable. I will call many friends to celebrate from noon until we are happiest. Greet your mother for me, and all your family. My father and my mother send them their greetings. Until then may your God give you health. Au revoir, goodbye sweetheart.

^a Originally meant to write to, now means to informally greet.

^b Literally full of happiness [from celebrating].

^c Phrase used by Carucerean Badists to refer to the Sotirian God.