Re: Insult (jara: Weekly Vocab 8)

Hi!

Sally Caves <scaves@...> writes:
> > --- John Cowan skrzypszy:
> >
> > > My favorite insult:  "Your parents were brothers!"
...
> Ailly!  What if you don't have a word in your language for "parent"?  Just
> "mother" or "father"?  In Teonaht, "parents" in the plural is "nippanand,"
> your "momdads."  How utterly hetero of the Teonim.  I suppose you could say:
>
> Fretyn fyl nippanand!  ("Brothers (are/were) your momdads!")
Haha!  In Tyl Sjok, I'd wonder whether it's important that the two are
*brothers*.  Another question that would be interesting is whether
they were siblings *on purpose* or whether they had no control about
that. :-)

The had control about being siblings:

     Jul je keng jux.

        jul  - parent
        je   - you
        keng - be equal to, but not the same entity; have the proporties of, be like
        jux  - sibling

        'Your parents are siblings (by their own control).'

With gender:

     Jul je keng jan jux.

        jan     - 'male, man'
        jan jux - 'sibling being male (without control about that) = brother'

        'Your parents are brothers (by their own control).'

Maybe the following is even more an insult:

     Keng (jan) jux jul je.

        'Your parents are siblings/(brothers) (without any control about it).'

So, what do you think is more insulting? :-)

(BTW, the reason why so many words start with 'j' is that persons and
personal pronouns usually have an initial 'j' in Tyl Sjok).

**Henrik