Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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In Tamanac, Jarer-Uac-Ure, Bearing Am I, - I Bear;
Anarepra Aichi, He Will Not Bear, Properly, Bearing Not Will
He;
patcurbe, good; patcutari, to make himself good; Tamanacu, a
Tamanac; Tamanacutari, to make himself a Tainanac; Pongheme, a
Spaniard;
Ponghemtari, to Spaniardize himself; tenecchi, I will
see; teneicre, I will see again; teecha, I go; tecshare, I return;
maypur butke, a little Maypure Indian; aicabutke, a little woman;
maypuritaje, an ugly Maypure Indian; aicataje, an ugly woman.* (*
The diminutive of woman (aica) or of Maypure Indian is formed by
adding butke, which is the termination of cujuputke, little: taje
answers to the accio of the Italians.)
In Biscayan: maitetutendot, I love him, properly, I loving have
him; beguia, the eye, and beguitsa, to see; aitagana, towards the
father: by adding tu, we form the verb aitaganatu, to go towards
the father; ume-tasuna, soft and infantile ingenuity; umequeria,
disagreeable childishness.
I may add to these examples some descriptive compounds, which call
to mind the infancy of nations, and strike us equally in the
American and Biscayan languages, by a certain ingenuousness of
expression. In Tamanac, the wasp (uane-imu), father (im-de) of
honey (uane);* (* It may not be unnecessary here to acquaint the
reader that honey is produced by an insect of South America,
belonging to, or nearly allied, to the wasp genus. This honey,
however, possesses noxious qualities which are by some naturalists
attributed to the plant Paulinia Australis, the juices of which are
collected by the insect.) the toes, ptarimucuru, properly, the sons
of the foot; the fingers, amgnamucuru, the sons of the hand;
mushrooms, jeje-panari, properly, the ears (panari) of a tree
(jeje); the veins of the hand, amgna-mitti, properly, the ramified
roots; leaves, prutpe-jareri, properly, the hair at the top of the
tree; puirene-veju, properly, the sun (veju), straight or
perpendicular; lightning, kinemeru-uaptori, properly, the fire
(uapto) of the thunder, or of the storm. (I recognise in kinemeru,
thunder or storm, the root kineme black.) In Biscayan, becoquia,
the forehead, what belongs (co and quia) to the eye (beguia);
odotsa, the noise (otsa) of the cloud (odeia), or thunder;
arribicia, an echo, properly, the animated stone, from arria,
stone, and bicia, life.
The Chayma and Tamanac verbs have an enormous complication of
tenses: two Presents, four Preterites, three Futures. This
multiplicity characterises the rudest American languages. Astarloa
reckons, in like manner, in the grammatical system of the Biscayan,
two hundred and six forms of the verb. Those languages, the
principal tendency of which is inflexion, are to the common
observer less interesting than those which seem formed by
aggregation. In the first, the elements of which words are
composed, and which are generally reduced to a few letters, are no
longer recognisable: these elements, when isolated, exhibit no
meaning; the whole is assimilated and mingled together. The
American languages, on the contrary, are like complicated machines,
the wheels of which are exposed to view. The mechanism of their
construction is visible.
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