nížu akai

nížu akai
rain CONT-DECL
"it's raining"

Not a heavy rain, though, like the one I got caught in Thursday morning, but something more like a kind of heavy condensation: You walk a few feet and gradually notice that water is beading on your glasses and clothes.

I realise full well that I'm obsessing about Osage right now; such is my way. I also realise that the best thing to do is simply run with it, hoping I garner enough from my studies over the next couple weeks that when I pick it up again six months to a year from now, I'll have actually retain more than I did before this last go. It's both a relief and a torture to find out that Quintero sent her dictionary to the publisher last December; a relief because I'm tired of working from the couple-page wordlist I've managed to squeeze out of her book, a torture because of course I want my copy NOW and can't figure out what's taking so goddamn long.

Maybe I'll fill the void by breaking my Wikipedia cherry and writing up a proper article on Osage Language for them.

It's all made worse by the fact that I did something nasty to my back last week (don't ask me how) and have had to cope with limited mobility. I did make it out a couple times last week (thanks again, vianegativa, for throwing that restaurant trip together) but I paid for it each time and decided that holing up for the weekend was the sane, adult choice. At least I got me some movies in:

The pillow book: Worked better on the small screen than I thought it might; with all the screen-in-screen, I worried it would be a cramped mess on monshu's TV, but not so much. I mean, it was a mess, but in that different way you've come to expect from Greenaway.

Km. 0: Yawn. What was that I said about modern gay movies having no recognisable human characters?

Fire Earnest in that groundbreaking-lesbian-film sort of way, but still quite watchable. A couple more musical numbers wouldn't have hurt none, of course. I'm still amazed it made it past the censors not once but twice.

Nor any a drop to drink

As it continues to rain outside (for real this time, not some pretend sprinkle), I find myself wondering what connection, if any, there may be between Osage nížu "rain" and níi "water". Or between the latter and níiõpapa "lightning". I guess there's no way of knowing without getting my hands on a comparative dictionary of Proto-Siouan or the like.

Níi, btw, shows up in some surprising compounds such as níixoce "ash" (lit. "water-gray") and níiskuðe "salt" (lit. "water-sweet"; go ponder that for a while!). By contrast, níišoce "fog, haze" (lit. "water-smoke") makes more sense, but it's interesting to me that none of these actually denotes a fluid.

Contrast that to, say, Thai compounds headed by ná:m (generally reduced to nám), e.g. námka:m "semen" (lit. "water [of] kama"; also ná:mrák "water [of] love"), námphŷng "honey" (lit. "water [of] bee"), ná:msàlàt "salad dressing; mayo" (lit. "water [of] salad"), etc. Even namta:n "sugar" (lit. "water [of] sugar palm") makes sense once you consider how palm sugar is boiled down from sap. Námwă:n or "sweet water" also means more-or-less what you'd expect, namely "soft drink".

On the other hand Osage hpéecenii or "fire-water" does mean "whiskey", exactly as watching TV Westerns has led you to expect. (Beer, on the other hand, is hkáwacéženii "horse-pee-water".)