Strange Sentences

Some peoples wrote with letters. Some wrote with little pictures. This one wrote with equations. Their scribes kept whole stories in ledgers that look, at a glance, like a page of algebra — every sentence balanced around an =, every idea folded into a fraction or tucked beneath a sign.

You've recovered eight lines of their writing, and for each one a kind soul left the meaning beside it. Study how the symbols move — what marks a plural, what flips a sentence into the negative, who is doing and who is done to — then use what you learn to read the final line entirely on your own.

The orphans are writing a letter.

The mother and the sister are talking.

The dwarfs are working without haste.

He is not in a hurry.

It wasn’t us who wrote about you.

It was not by him that the letter was written.

The wicked dwarf ate the parents.

The mother doesn’t like the work.

Now read the last line on your own and translate it into English: