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Re: Equatives?

From:taliesin the storyteller <taliesin@...>
Date:Tuesday, March 11, 2003, 8:33
* H. S. Teoh said on 2003-03-10 23:17:52 +0100
> On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 03:47:56PM -0500, Sally Caves wrote: > [snip] > > _Ta_ BTW is an all purpose prep. that means "for," or "with respect to," and > > is used in these comparative structures. It also means "how" or "so," and > > hence has quasi adverbial meaning: Ta androfaiht! "How beautiful!" > [snip] > > Hmm, sounds similar to Ebisedian's _i're_ ["?ir`&], which incidentally was > introduced to the lexicon only today. > > _i're_ is one of those words which is hard to adequately express in > English. Its basic meaning is emphasis. Your exclamation above would be > translated as: > i're dami'l! > "Truly beautiful!" > > It's also used as an emphatic particle: > i're gafa'n3 ebi'! > "I am indeed really angry!" > > And as an exclamation: > i're! > "Really!" (surprise/exasperation) > > This is rather difficult to translate... it's closest to the Mandarin > exclamation _tsen1 shi4_. Literally, "it is really"; it's used as an > exclamation of exasperation, similar in feeling to "geez, *some* people > are *just* like that!".
Heh, I also have a word that *in English* might be translated to 'really', but with heavier weight on the exasperation/despair-axis... keigah: really, oh sure, yeah right, indeed, naturally, of course, aha, duh... Said in a *very* dry manner, tone going from the merely ironic to the straight out caustically sarcastic :) For emphasis there's i-, and in addition to superlative there's a way to express too much, -arrinn, and too little, -eirinn, now what can these be called? Super-duperlative? Megative? Over-the-top-ative? t.

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H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...>