Grammar Grumbling

I’ve come to think of the place Kohric and I go over things as the “teaching place.” I feel like I’ve been at the teaching place forever, even though it's only been three days. The teaching place has become a comfortable, relatively safe haven in an environment where so much is completely unknown and alien.



Kohric is wonderful. I still don’t entirely know what his function in the clan is. He refers to himself as “thanda-tu D’Keda.” The others seem to give him respect. Their greetings to him tend to be the formal, head-bobbing kind more than the simple hand gestures. I take it he’s kind of the guy who makes sure the youngsters have enough general knowledge to make it.

That description kinda makes him sound like a bit of a dry, boring dude. But that’s really not true. He has this odd, random wit that comes out of nowhere. Like, this afternoon when I was getting really frustrated, he decided to suddenly teach me the word for “fart”. So, while I’m still struggling with their goddamn freakish grammar, I can at least tell someone it wasn’t me playing the buttock bassoon.

Oh, their grammar. I’m picking up decent amounts of vocabulary. It’s fairly simple to memorize words. It takes a lot of practice, but not really that difficult. Grammar, though, that’s basically the way your brain processes those words. And damn, if that’s not a LOT harder to grasp. I have to slowly dissect each sentence and translate it back into English in my mind right now. I despair of ever becoming fluent.

Really, I’m spoiled by Latin based languages. They have funky grammar here and there, but it really isn’t all that different from English. Take French. In English, you say “I would like the fruit.” In French it’s “Je voudrais le fruit.” It’s basically the same sentence, just with different words. “I” is still in the same place, for example. “Would like” is mashed into “voudrais” but it’s pretty much the same thing.

In Azu-nah, “I would like the fruit,” would be “edusai-doku kayo,” which, in English, is “want-me fruit.” They have a word for “the” but they don’t use it much. And verbs seem to attach themselves to nouns. Learning which verbs attach to what nouns is giving me a headache. “I want the fruit” isn’t too bad. I’d get it if they were all like that. But then you think about saying “He said she wanted the fruit to give to her brother.”

My head still hurts from today’s lessons.

Kohric turned me loose as the sun was beginning to dip so I could find something to eat and rest my aching brain. The Azu-nah tend to take their major meal in the afternoon, and they take it more or less as a group. Or, really, those who went out hunting and gathering over the day bring their finds to a circle of small fire pits. And then everyone else joins them to divvy out the food. Kohric must have said something about my meat issue, because it’s become a bit of a game for the gathered Azu to try and be the first to find something for me to eat.

Ikaylay from the terrible trio “won” tonight, and pranced up to me with a round, gray colored tuber called “heksanan.” It looks like a potato pretending to be a rock, but the inside is porous and squishy. It’s eerily reminiscent of bread. But it tastes a bit sweet, like a carrot or corn. Heksanan it is. I couldn’t classify this thing if I tried.

“Teegaahn, hai?” Ikaylay said, gesturing toward me. He pointed to himself, “Ikaylay,” then to me “Teegaahn?”

“Hai. Oki-kaibo Tee.” I said.

Ikaylay suddenly gap grinned, and gestured excitedly to his two cohorts. Sodo and Nohwasi crowded near and listened as Ikaylay chattered at them. “Oki-kaibo Tee!” he kept repeating. The others were grinning by now too, and muttering “Oki-tee Tee!”

Kohric, always relatively nearby to rescue me from a Lost in Translation, padded up behind me and gestured. He held his forepaw near the ground. “Kas” he said. Then he sat back on his haunches and reached as high as he could, “Tee.”

Oh for the love of crap. I’m officially a pun! “Tee” is their word for “tall.” And since I’m a good half meter taller than any of them, they find this discovery utterly hilarious. The Trio spent the rest of the meal calling me “Tee-Tee” and saying to their neighbors “Oki-tee Tee!” I have a feeling it’s going to be a while before this one goes away.

Oh well. At least Tee isn’t Azu for fart!