One of the books I read is titled Biting the Wax Tadpole, about grammar from around the world. I love this book. An excerpt for your enjoyment:
A particularly unusual feature of Guarani is its use of tense-but not with relation to verbs, with relation to nouns. Guarani nouns can be marked with two different endings, -
kue or -ra. Kue is a past-tense marker, similar to the English prefix ex-, and -ra is a future tense marker. So if you consider the word for "president," mburuvicha, then Bill Clinton is a mburuvichakue, and Barack Obama is a potential mburuvichara. You can also combine the endings: mburvicharangue means "what we thought was going to be a future president but then turned out not to be." In other words: Al Gore.
kue or -ra. Kue is a past-tense marker, similar to the English prefix ex-, and -ra is a future tense marker. So if you consider the word for "president," mburuvicha, then Bill Clinton is a mburuvichakue, and Barack Obama is a potential mburuvichara. You can also combine the endings: mburvicharangue means "what we thought was going to be a future president but then turned out not to be." In other words: Al Gore.I know I'm probably the only one who gets a kick out of stuff like this. But, I thought it was funny!
4 comments:
I have to take pleasure in this, it's probably the only month that I will ever beat you in page counts :)
Poor Al...no one is EVER going to let him forget! :D
Interesting book.
Al who? Oh, that guy who invented oxygen - or internet - or both.
My question is - did you read any good COOKING MURDERS?
I still haven't read the Cream Puff Killer, or whatever it is called. I'm getting to it. :)
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