Babel Passage in Palato

1. Ada tempa da, eruda tota ga utili iu o lingua un e vocabae comuna.

2. Viege a esta, sen ga turovu o terae pulata in terae du Shinar e restu ada loda.

3. Sa oma ga pali a otura, “Men facinai o burican e cocai bona o dan.” Suiva sen ga utilu o burica ada loca du roca e pica po morutera.

4. Sen ga palu, “Men facinai o siva po men e tura con seson aluta in siala. E farai o noma po men, si ne, men ga ii esparusai a eruda tota.

5. Doma vinu a basa po vise o siva e tura ce du umana facinu.

6. Doma ga palu, “Ia, sen ga popula un. O lingua un sen ga abi. Sen ga comensi con di. Na, cosan to ce du sen fari desi ga sen fari posi.

7. Men ga vinai a basa loda po confundi o lingua sea, suiva sa oma compureni ne posi iai o otura.

8. Ia Doma ga esparusu o sen a eruda tota du loda, e sen ga facine aresu o siva.

9. Suiva noma du siva ga ii apilu Babel*, po Doma ga confundu loda o lingua du eruda tota. Du loda, Doma ga esparusu o sen su eruda tota.

Babel Passage in English

1. At that time, the whole world used one language and one vocabulary.

2. Heading east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.

3. They were all saying, “Let’s make bricks and bake them well.” So they used bricks for stone and tar for cement.

4. They said, “We’ll make a city for ourselves and a tower reaching into the sky. We’ll make a name for ourselves, otherwise we’ll become scattered over all the earth.

5. The Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people had made.

6. The Lord then said, “So, they are one people, with one language. They’ve just begun. Soon, anything they want to do they will be able to do.

7. Let’s go down there and confuse their language so that each one will not be able to understand the other.”

8. So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.

9. Thus the name of the city became Babel*, since it was there that the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there, the Lord scattered them over the whole world.

* Babel is Babylon, the Mesopotamian city. The etiology given for the name in the text is that the ‘confusing’ of languages occurred there (Hebrew verbal root bll can mean ‘confuse’). The Babylonians themselves resorted to a folk etymology to explain the name of their city (Babylon < ‘gate of the gods’), so the name most likely derives from an earlier culture. I suspect the Tower of Babel story owes much to the forced resettlement of the Jews by Nebuchadnezzar. The displaced Jews in Babylon would have been exposed to many unfamiliar languages. This Genesis story bears the spirit of many writings from around the ancient world circa 500 years BCE, while it is totally unlike other texts dating from its supposed date of composition (1400 BCE?).

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Umana to ga ii nasucu libera e egala de valura sena e diretan sena. Sen ga ii danu o soluviposie e consiensa, ia iai coma furata a otura.

(All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.)