Re: 80th lexicon entry

On Sun, Sep 16, 2001 at 02:52:42PM -0400, Steg Belsky wrote:
[snip]
> And then there's the 'filler' word _yeli_ that i mentioned in the "verbal
> diarrhea" thread, which means "so", "then", "therefore"... but its exact
> use is still sort of ambiguous in my mind... something like:
>
> _balghm uhmzu-dazek sha'itãl-a tzma-a, yeli amzu-dazek ^urei^razknm_
>  = "evil people set fire to our island, so we ignited flames of
> remembrances_
>
> In that sentence the _yeli_ could conceivably be replaced with the phrase
> _i nga'gaur dhu_ "and because of that"
>
> or:
>
> _azuza-khezã wa'<TV>, i..._
>  = "i was watching TV, and..."
> _(i) yeli?_
>  = "and then?"
Cool, your _yeli_ sounds a lot like my _keve_ :-) A little con-etymology:
_keve_ comes from the correlative particles _Ke_ and _ve_, which is like
the Attic Greek _men_ and _de_. Over time, the two particles fused into
_Keve_ to mean a weaker form of "... on the one hand, on the other hand
...". The non-emphatic usage eventually wore down the aspiration and so it
became _keve_. It still carries the correlative flavor from its origins.


T

--
And life still goes on...

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