Out of the ancient past-- Vocab #5

I have been wanting to do this vocab exercises, but I haven't had any time
until now.  Here ya go, with word-for-word translations and all.

At 04:44 PM 4/26/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>   Brought to you by C (for coffee), the distinction between perfective and
>habitual past tenses, and intensive adjectives.
>
>   1. coffee / bitter drink / culturally distinctive drink
>       I used to drink coffee.
na = any hot (or iced) plant+water infusion beverage, most commonly
understood to be tea, but also used to construct "coffee".
tuina = (coffee (plant) + na), coffee
The coffee beans themselves can be called "tui", which refers to the whole
plant and/or any part of the plant.

ema buri lupi la ea-tuina.
past always drink(v) I the-coffee
I *always* used to drink coffee. (That is, I had a two-pot-a-day habit, and
you never saw me without a cup in my hand back in those days.)

ema lupi buri la ea-tuina.
past drink(v) always I the-coffee.
I *used* to drink coffee. (emphasizing the past,  strongly implying a
complete discontinuation since then.)

ema eni lupi la ea-tuina.
past habitual drink(v) I the-coffee.
I used to drink coffee. (Just a statement of fact that I drank coffee in
the past as a habit.)

I have been making some changes to ea-luna in the last couple of months, so
this comes at a good time to show off the habitual. I liked it so much in
my later languages that I ported it back to ea-luna. The older
constructions, shown first, also remain in the language. They retain their
original emphasis, while the new habitual is a more neutral statement of
fact. It's nice to have multiple avenues of expression.

>   2. tea / herbal tea
>        I drank the tea in one gulp.
katuna = (tea (plant) + na) , black tea
ralina = (mint (plant) + na), mint tea

mega            ema lupi la ea-katuna.
(all at once) past drink  I the-coffee.

mega is a useful little word that can be used in talking about a quantity
of something being used/consumed/moved/etc at one time, or in talking about
concurrent events, (ie, the phone rang, the baby screamed, the door bell
rang and I burned the roast, all at the same moment = mega).

>   3. steep / brew
>       She used to steep the tea for 10 minutes, but she steeped this cup
>for only 7 minutes.
Well, there seems to be a hole in my vocabulary here.
A quick study of the original ea-luna-English dictionary shows that "bue"
is available to fill this purpose, and since "bu" is the general word for
beverage, that seems to work out nicely.

bue = steep or brew (to make a "na")

For my own personal usage-on-the-fly,  I probably would have said
"alu...na" ("make... tea").

ema eni bue ia nai lude ki la-katuna, eu ia lira lude lela bagu-gapa.
past habitual brew (time) 10 minutes she the-tea, but (time) 7 minutes
not-more-than this-portion.

"ia" marks a time expression (and is a very handy time-related preposition
otherwise as well).
An almost literal rendering of "ia lira lude lela" would be "for seven
minutes and no more".

>   4. pastry / biscuits / cookies
lapu = sweet pastry, including cream puffs, eclairs, turnovers, and even
baklava

>   5. milk
>       She doesn't take milk in her tea.
mu = milk.
(Yes, I was being silly on purpose.)

ewe lea ki ea-katuna ei mu.
neg. prefer she the-tea with milk.

lea la ea-katuna ei iwe. (I prefer tea with lemon.)

Note that I would usually use "li" (epicene 3rd person singular) in place
of "ki" ("she") unless there was a reason for being specific. This may
change, though. In starting to more formally document ea-luna, I have
noticed that I started out with several pronouns that I just plain forgot
about after I lost my original grammar notes, and I might try using them
more often.

I may yet tweak this language to death.

>   6. bitter
pegu = bitter.

>   7. sweet
keku = sweet

>   8. wired / the feeling obtained after drinking 43 cups of coffee
This is a word that I *need*.  I have a word for "nervous", but that's not
quite the same.

walu = "wired"

>   9. mellow / calm / soothing (of music)
>        The music they play is too mellow for my taste.
dewi = gentle, mild -- probably the word that would be used in this context
in ea-luna.

>   10. street vendor / coffee house / tea bar / the culturally appropriate
>place to buy a cup of tea or coffee
>        That street vendor always had the best tea, but then his wife left
> him.
nare = restaurant, any place that serves food and/or drink, except fast food.
pabu = fast food restaurant (e.g. McDonald's)

>   [p.s. In honor of my becoming the manager of the grad student coffee
>house on campus. Yay!]
Congratulations, even if it is quite belated.

Mia