Jewish songs

[Teilnehmer]

Here is my attempt to translate Hava Nagila (‘Let us rejoice’), a famous Jewish folk song:
Hava Nagila in Toki Pona — youtube

And this:
Echad Mi Yodea? (Who Knows One?) in Toki Pona — youtube
is not a direct translation of the Echad Mi Yodea? song (which consists of 13 couplets, each introducing a concept of Judaism associated with the number of the couplet), but rather a parodic tokiponization based on Toki Pona’s reluctance to count above two and to deal with complex concepts.

I’m not very happy with my translations, so improvements are very welcome!

[janKipo]

Hava Nagila works nicely as a translation and as a song (I could scarcely keep from dancing). The only questions are 1) matters of punctuation, where it is not clear whether things are vocatives or subjects and the whole hortatory imperatives or ordinary imperatives. 2) the whole current confusion about ‘o’. Is, for example, ‘pilin pona’ something one can command? But surely it is something one can encourage and thus seems to get by somehow (not very clearly but emotionally OK). I’, not sure what ‘o kon pona’ “Breathe well” means.
The second piece runs into tp tradition, which uses ’sewi’ alone for “God”, the ‘jan’ having to many inappropriate connotations and ’sewi mi’ doesn’t extend to cover the rhythm well, Alos, the free-floating 'lon sewi’ (or ‘lon ma sewi’ and ‘lo ma’ really need to be tied to ’sewi mi’ with ‘pi’s but that messes things up, too. Still overall it is very effective. Thanks.

[Teilnehmer]

matters of punctuation, where it is not clear whether things are vocatives or subjects and the whole hortatory imperatives or ordinary imperatives.

I implied a long hortatory imperative: mi o kon pona o pilin pona o kama kalama.
Interpreting o kama kalama and/or o pilin pona as normal imperatives also doesn’t seem terribly wrong to me though.

I’, not sure what ‘o kon pona’ “Breathe well” means.

I meant something like ‘Let’s be in good spirits’.

The second piece runs into tp tradition, which uses ’sewi’ alone for “God”, the ‘jan’ having to many inappropriate connotations

I’m more accustomed to the (pre-Pu — ?) tradition of referring to personalized God as jan sewi like here for example.

the free-floating 'lon sewi’ (or ‘lon ma sewi’ and ‘lo ma’ really need to be tied to ’sewi mi’ with ‘pi’s

Here, I, possibly, missuderstand the Toki Pona grammar.
For some reason, I believed that one could join two or more prepositional constructions without pi’s, just like one can do it with e’s in ‘ona li kama jo e ilo alasa e len loje’.
Is this not possible with lon instead of e?

[Teilnehmer]

I believed that one could join two or more prepositional constructions without pi’s

I’ve found some examples in the corpus:

ken la, mi mute li kama kulupu lon ma ante lon tenpo ante.

mi pana e tomo tawa lijna tawa nasin wan tawa nasin tu.

mi wile weka e ike tan mi tan jan ante.

[janKipo]

Sorry, I took the ‘lon’s To be modifying ‘jan sewi mi’, a noun phrase, not the the vestigial verb phrase of which it was part. So it is my knowledge, not God, that is in earth and heaven?

[Teilnehmer]

So it is my knowledge, not God, that is in earth and heaven?

Why?
mi sona e wan. (end of the sentence)
wan li jan sewi mi lon sewi lon ma.
In this sentence, the predicate is jan sewi mi. The prepositional phrases are related to it, just like lon ma ante, lon tenpo ante are related to kama kulupu in the example above.

OK, even if vestigial verb is a thing in Toki Pona, are the rules really that strict about prepositional phrases?
An example from Pu:

jan mute li sona ala tawa lon telo. ‘Many people don’t know how to swim’.

Note, there’s no pi, and lon telo is related only to a part of the predicate—tawa.

Well, I think one can also consider it’s uniqueness of God that is in Earth and Heaven. ‘There's no other god either in Heaven or in Earth’, which is quite close in meaning too.

[Teilnehmer]

Avadim Hayinu (We Were Slaves) — youtube

Original lyrics:

Avadim hayinu, hayinu. — We were slaves, we were.
Ata bəney chorin, bəney chorin. — Now, free people, free people.
Avadim hayinu. — We were slaves.
Ata, ata bəney chorin. — Now, now, free people.
Avadim hayinu. — We were slaves.
Ata, ata bəney chorin, bəney chorin. — Now, now, free people, free people.