Friday, November 5, 2021

Kion fari?

A small break in the action: "what to do?"

This has been irritating me of late, because it's such a simple little structure in the languages I know best, but I could not figure out how to express it in Koa. First attempt: Kea sa kipaete? Literally "what is to be done?" But this has...so many morphemes. I'm wondering whether there might be something like Kea sa ete? I think this would be a focalization of ete kea? meaning literally "do what?" Actually either of those Koa sentences seem like they could work, looking at it like that, and in fact the latter feels like it might retain more of the vibe of the original: it's not really a focused sentence pragmatically, more a general neutral statement about a situation.

Incidentally, in the realm of little useful Koa phrases, I forgot to mention the translation of "OMG" that Allison and I worked out back in April! The Koa version is OVN, short for oo vala ni. I meant to start integrating that into my texting but somehow haven't managed it yet...

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