Sunday, May 21, 2006

Speaking in Tongues

Says Rebecca West:

"In the valley beyond we [...] came on a tumbledown village, shabby and muddy and paintless and charming, called Vakuf. Vakuf is a Turkish word meaning religious property; I have never heard anything that made me more positively anxious not to study Turkish than the news that the plural of this word is Evkaf."

I feel you, Becky. If someone had told me from the beginning that in order to say, in Georgian, "I will meet you all" I'd have to hack up shegvkhvdebi, I'd probably never have started down this lonesome path.

UPDATE: Upon further reflection, I realized that word up there means "You will meet us." "I will meet you all," naturally, is shegkhvdebit. Either that or we will meet you, of indeterminate number. Oh hell, I give up.

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