r/WarframeLore • u/ImCravingForSHUB • 7h ago
One possibility on what the sentence "Voull ne xata vok, mara lohk?" Means
So far this one sentence said by Wally remains untranslated, and there has been attempts at translating it such as in this post although I have to be honest, I'm slightly unsatisfied with the answer but we do know the definitive translation of two words being xata meaning truth and lohk meaning void plus mara very possibly meaning child and voull being a compound word with oull as its root meaning possibility
So this may very well be an extremely outlandish theory plus I am not a linguist (although i do have good grades in English back in school), but when trying to connect the strings of translatable words, one can see a small - how do i put it - pattern
Putting all the words together
Voull ne xata vok mara lohk?
V- prefix(?) + possibility(?) (...) Truth (...), Child(?) Void?
In this way, an easy to read pattern emerges and using the knowledge that has been meticulously dissected by the community and written carefully in the wiki (god bless them all), we know that Voidtongue is VSO structured and can attempt at full translation by using the structure of the language itself and context clues of the times it was spoken by Wally
I believe V- is a prefix to oull, not compound words from vome and since oull is both possibility in the literal sense and in a void metaphysical sense, V- prefix is used to turn oull into a demonstrative word, so from my extremely flawed interpretation, v+oull means this/that/those/these, who knows which one is actually used since Wally is extremely vague with us
However, another possible translation is that v+oull could also turn the word into a verb, again taking in the metaphysical property of Voidtongue and adding in context clues of what is happening when the sentence is said, voull could become seek
The word ne is untranslated but it acts as a bridge between the demonstrative and xata or truth and, adhering to the VSO language structure that Voidtongue is, I am inclined to believe ne is the subject in the sentence and it means you, so ne xata means you truth, which is a Subject - Object relation
Vok - the vok do i know? But seriously though this word is the hardest for me to translate as its position in relation to other word made it confusing on what could it possibly mean but again, judging from its position in the sentence, it basically acted as another bridge between the last two sentences which makes this word extremely confusing to translate and I have no choice but to take a shot in the dark and say that vok is numerics, and it means one
Mara lohk is pretty explanatory and it acts as an addendum or an additional object in this sentence due to its position and the meaning can be taken from another character who also referred to the Tenno directly as mara lohk other than Wally and that person, or rather, animal is Tagfer. Yes he does sound a little cynical when he called the Tenno as mara lohk but also a bit... hopeful? As if he calls us to reach out, to say, to ask us of something and it would be quite inappropriate to vilify someone you're trying to ask help from (kinda stretching it a bit here as I see Tagfer as being a human and of course understand this kind of human logic to not vilify someone when asking for help) as void demon so mara lohk is more than likely translated as child (of the) void
So in conclusion, looking at it from this very flawed linguistics perspective of mine, the sentence "Voull ne xata vok, mara lohk?" Literally translates to Seek you (the) truth/true one, child (of the) void? Or to make it easier to understand for us who is accustomed to English' Subject-Verb-Object structure and Wally's very pretentious way of speech
