Kaltxì ma frapo,

Tengkrr lerok zìskrrsomìl tì’i’at, sìlpey oe, ayngari te’lan livu lefpom ulte tìrey zivawprrte’.

We haven’t had any new vocabulary in a while, so here are a few words and expressions, along with a couple of idioms, that I think you’ll find useful.

kantseng (n., KAN.tseng) ‘destination’

This word is, of course, derived from kan ‘aim’ + tseng ‘place.’ Your destination is the place you aim for.

Ngeyä fìtìsopìri pehantseng?

‘This journey of yours—what’s its destination?’

la’a (n., LA.’a) ‘physical separation, distance between two places or objects’

Don’t confuse la’a with lìm. The verb lìm ‘be far’ and the derived adverb alìm involve something being relatively far away rather than close: ’Ì’awn alìm! ‘Stand back!’ (That is, ‘Remain relatively far away.’) Sim ‘be near’ and asim ‘nearby’ work in a similar fashion. La’a, on the other hand, is neutral as to whether something is near or far; it simply refers to the separation between two places or things. The idiomatic way to ask how far A is from B is simply: Ftu A ne B pela’a?

Ftu Kelutral ne Txintseng Sawtuteyä pela’a?

‘How far is Hometree from Hell’s Gate?’

pela’a (inter., pe.LA.’a) ‘how near, how far, what distance’

As you might suspect, we also have the variant la’ape (inter., LA.’a.pe) meaning the same thing.

NOTE: Alternate terms for pela’a and la’ape are:

pelìmsim (inter., pe.LÌM.sim) ‘how near, how far’

and its variant lìmsimpe (inter., LÌM.sim.pe). These are used in the same way as pela’a, although pela’a is the more common expression.

keynven (vin., keyn.VEN, inf. 1,1) ‘step’

This intransitive verb is clearly derived from the transitive verb keyn ‘put down’ + venu ‘foot.’ When you step, you put down your foot.

Nari si tengkrr kereynven fìtseng. Lu kllte ekxtxu.

‘Step carefully here. The ground is rough.’

As you see in the preceding example, one way to express the idea ‘Do X carefully’ is to say ‘Be careful as you’re doing X.’ Since that’s a bit long-winded, a simpler idiomatic expression has arisen: Nari si+ V (root form).

Nari si keynven!

‘Step carefully!’

Nari si lonu swizawit.

‘Release the arrow carefully.’

Also note this idiom:

Po keynven sìn ketse.

‘He is socially awkward. (Literally, He steps on tails.)’

Speaking of idioms, here’s another one I think you’ll find useful:

To express your regret that someone couldn’t attend a meeting or event:

Ngari keftxo fwa ke tok.

‘We missed you. Sorry you couldn’t make it. Too bad you couldn’t be there.’

Literally, this is saying, ‘It’s sad that you weren’t there,’ with the object of tok unspecified. A shorter and more colloquial way to say this is to omit fwa:

Ngari keftxo ke tok.

ralke (adj., RAL.ke) ‘meaningless, devoid of content’

Derived from ral ‘meaning’ + (lu)ke ‘without,’ ralke is the opposite of ralnga’.

Txewì ka trro nìwotx ftxolulì’u, slä aylì’u peyä längu ralke.

‘Txewi spoke for an entire day, but sadly, his words were meaningless.’

Finally, we’ve had the adverb nìfkeytongay ‘actually, as a matter of fact, in reality’ for some time now, but not yet the words it’s related to. Here they are:

tìfkeytongay (n., tì.fkey.to.NGAY) ‘reality’

This comes from tìfkeytok ‘state, condition, situation’ + (a)ngay ‘true’: reality is the true situation. (Note that the k at the end of tìfkeytok has dropped just as it did in nìfkeytongay, making the pronunciation easier and smoother.)

Ayunil ngeyä lu lor, slä fìtxeleri lu tìfkeytongay keteng.

‘Your dreams are beautiful, but the reality of this situation is different.’

lefkeytongay (adj., le.fkey.to.NGAY) ‘real’

Similar to the evolution of nìfkeytongay, this word was originally *letìfkeytokangay. (See this blog post for a fuller explanation.)

Yune oet! Ke lu fìvrrtep tute lefkeytongay!!!

‘Listen to me! This demon is not a real person!!!’

A few grammatical things have come up that I’d like to share with you, but I’ll do that in another post.

Hayalovay, ma smuk!