Passive revisited

Now to clear up the passive voice in Kareyku. The passive uses the impersonal suffix -ey, but adds onto it the corresponding transition which, therefore, will have a passive meaning. This is the more idiomatic way of conveying a reversal of the normal flow of the transition, some examples:

awi chaqqeytas, "the field is plowed"

To which we can add;

awi odanqa chaqqeytas, "the field is plowed by you"

kukun taroqa weneytanchi, "a bird was bought by my father", "my father bought a bird", lit. "acquired"

Talking about this being a more idiomatic way to reverse the natural flow of transitions, I give you these examples (remember Kareyku very often leaves pronouns out, specially in conversations):

qorikas, qoreykas?, "I care for you, do you care for me?" lit. "am I cared (by you)?"

This absence of pronouns will depend on context, since Kareyku is context-dependent. However, they are marked when they are needed or when you want to indicate an action was done for someone else, let's see an example of this last situation:

waka taroqa yaran weneytansi, "my father got me a wife"

By this last sentence I don't mean, as in the previous example, that the wife was "bought" but was rather "acquired" as in an arranged marriage. This, by the way, was a very common practice of some Kareyku speakers.

Familial terms, part 1

Today I'll talk about some familial terms, words used to refer to different members of the family. This entry in particular will deal with the terms used for the offsprings. In Kareyku we have two different terms for this, on the one hand we have ile, which means literally "son", its feminine counterpart is ali, "daughter". But there is a more common term that's used, inwa, which is pretty neutral and means "child, offspring".

As of usage, the first term is mostly used in a formal context or a neutral context. The second term, inwa, is the more idiomatic and also it's highly employed as a vocative and term of endearment for both genders. As a result, one may speak of one's son and daughter, but address them as "child". A derived term from this is for example alile, which means "son and daughter".

ikanu alile yori seya, "my son and daughter are very young"

Also of note is that in Kareyku one does not say "I have X children", but rather "I live with X children", so for instance a person with a son and a daughter would say:

alileni lopalkas, "I have a son and a daughter"
literally: "I live with a son and a daughter"

And of course the famous phrase of respect for your in-laws:

ikanu waka odanu ali, shinu toru odanu ile
"my wife is your daughter, her husband is your son"

Suffixes revisited: Impersonal Suffix

Today I'm going to start a series of posts revising suffixes I've mentioned and straightening up their final forms and usages. I will start with the impersonal suffix used with verbs. The impersonal verbs are more commonly referred in English as the weather verbs, because they are mainly used in this regard. In some other languages, including Kareyku, the "impersonality" can be further extended to almost any verb to mean not a particular person. Some languages, like English, use a dummy pronoun (in this case "it") or like French with "on".

The impersonal suffix is -ey, and we can apply it to any verb, for example qappa- "to eat", giving:

Qappey, "one eats"

To exemplify its usage in a sentence:

ko-lyo save qapp-ey, "one eats well here"

It could just as well have been translated as "you can eat well here", or "one does eat well here". You can further apply adverbs like "always" or the like to imply different meanings. The suffix is quite productive and can be used with any other verb:

ikan ke odanu kemu taney, "it is said that I'm not your friend"

And of course, be used with evidentials;

ikan ke odanu kemu taney-n, "I heard it being said that I'm not your friend"

In expressions it often gives an idiomatic feel;

kopey shu?, "is it understood?" > "got it?"

And of course it can be used for all the weather verbs:

narey, "it rains"