Re: Equatives?

* 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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