Secondly, tongue twisters. They exists in all languages. Caleb (another wonderful member of the World Harvest Mission team here in Mundri) and I while hosting bible study went about getting our tongues tied in many languages. In trying to learn how to tell one of our friends how to "shut up" (all in love of course) we found out how to say close your mouth, or something along those lines: gafol cassuma. This lead to Tata saying kamsa cassuma, eventually leading to kawaja kamsa cassuma. Needless to say we looked like fools trying to say it. You try... not easy. Then trying to return the favour we told them to say toy boat, and sure enough they could do it just fine. I blame it somehow on the language barrier.
Finally, I don't know what it is about tribal languages, but they are just incredibly hard for me to learn. Mainly because I end up laughing half of the time when I try to say the words. My favourite might be the word for almighty/powerful: mbarapara. Prayers are just great in Moru to listen to! Lu mbarapara, opi amaro ci (Almighty God, Lord... then I don't know). Today I was practicing how to say goat, since my new pastime is throwing old corn on the cobs at them. Apparently I just cannot get it right. I don't know if my intonation was wrong, or my emphasis was wrong, or maybe Tata was just messing with me, whatever it was we spent a good 10 minutes trying to get me to say indri. As usual I ended up laughing and I probably still don't say it right because of that stupid rolled r.
Anyways, time for sleep. Nyu du ka'do (Sleep well... I think)
Thomas
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