From: William J Poser (wjposer@ldc.upenn.edu)
Date: Tue Apr 21 2009 - 12:08:16 CDT
The problem of translation is even worse than you may realize. In the
language of the area in which I live, for example, before I can decide
how to say "it's raining" I need to know whether the speaker is on land
or on water. nawhulhtih means "it is raining onto land". tawhulhtih
means "it is raining into water". And in the relatively unusual situation
in which the rain is falling into a cave or cellar we would have
'awhulhtih "it is raining into a hole". Similarly, we have najus
"it is snowing onto land", tajus "it is snowing into water", 'ajus
"it is snowing into a hole". And should we get into hail, we not only
have those possibilities, but we have to double their number since we
must distinguish between dense hail (e.g. 'indloo nawhulhtih = "it is
hailing densely onto land") and sparse hail (e.g. 'indloo nanukat =
"it is hailing sparsely onto land").
Bill
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