Guarani parte moköi whoop whoop

es la verdad, menthols suck

So yes, another sleepness night in paraguay. Literally not a wink, and thats weird because the last few days have been harsh. Three nghts ago, we were having a few beers getting ready to head to the defenders of the chaco stadium to see paraguay brazil the next day, and we run into a group of parguayans. But not campesinos como yo estoy acostumbrado, chuchi (thats rich, luxurious in the G) lebanese ciudad del este´ers rolling around asuncion in a late model benz SUV. Asi es paraguay, we were with them at night, but if it had been day time we surely would have driven past donkey carts loaded with mandioca heading to the municipal market. Anyways, the dudes introduced themselves and had a table filled with MGD´s straight up high life (because in paraguay, they actually think budweiser is the king of beers [Labatt´s Blue was launched in Paraguay about 3 months ago as well...Ejuke goldsalt]). And they were just like, lebanon, you know like the war with israel. They knew we were americans, and they should have realized that could have been a touchy subject, but I was just like ndaipori mba´ere, la guerravaijepi. Kopyhare daha´ei guerra peguarä - there isn´t why, war is always ugly, tonight isn´t for war - just hoping we could kind of be like ¨moving on...¨ like when I was headed to heathrow and a japanese family asked me if I knew which the asian terminal was and i didn´t know and we struck up a convo and I asked where they were from and they go nagasaki and I said, ¨oh I know th...yikes¨. But as per usual, it was tranquilo. They knew enough english, and we know bastante castellano. I don´t even remember their names because the first thing they wanted to kno0w were the dirty words, so from that point on one of them was f--- face, another was jaguacuña (b*t*h), and the last was f----t. And they gave eachother those names. They taught us some arabic, if anybody out there knows it you´re a kasemagh (i think thats it) and then we taught them how to shotgun and open beer bottles with lighters. The only friction was that they couldn´t speak guarani and their girlfriends were paraguayaitekuera (mestizo) and they got a little possessive when we were talking with their ladies in a language they couldn´t understand. But tranquilo, they said it was a ¨dirty language, for the field¨. i corrected him and said kokue peguarä (for the field). Thats not offensive in paraguay either. The brazileros don´t learn it, neither do los alemanes, ni los polacos, ni koreanos, ni los ricos de asuncion. Oosh (thats a word in guarani). Speaking of rivalries with brazillians...


http://www.tsn.ca/soccer/story/?id=240830


bam! deal with it braziputos!! And it was a sick game. Paraguay should have won 4-0 btu what can you do. For me there were three highlights to my experience of the game. The win. The sun setting into the chaco (which in quechua means land of the animals. for Yerba Mate the word mate is derived from quechua as well. Its is their word for gourd because only the new world had the cucurbit family and they hollowed and cured the gourds to use as the yerba cup. Go look at google earth ha evevemi Alto paranaguive cuzcopeve and tell me that preconquest south america didn´t have a thriving economy.) and over the rio paraguay as time was running out and the entire city emptied into the streets to party almost all night in the plaza de los heroes bien cerca de el panteon de los heroes and the palacia de justicia (in fact near the place where the people from the Dos came to demand title to their land from stroessner). The commentary behind me of a father and his son at the game:

a paraguayan midfielder is getting ready to iso some helpless brazillian and dude just says to his player ¨veni papi, no hay nadie, solo marecones¨
...his son after it was 2-0 goes ¨papa, papa, ya ganemos¨, ¨noooo hijito, no hay que pensar eso¨, and then i turned around ¨ne´irä ñagana...pero angu´ite che ra¨ we still haven´t won...but in a second my friend, because in guarani you tack on che ra, my friend, for emphasis. Ro´yyypaite che ra its freaking cold! but then Ro´uuu che ra means eat me my friend. Another good misspeak is the word haku. It means hot for weather and horniness. If you´re overheating you say che che mbyryai. But we had a quince to go to during training (sweet 15), and we were being good social volunteers dancing with the mitacuña´i, but che ajerykyhina (i was dancing) with like a 12 year old, but we had just started learning guarani and i wanted to use it (but didn´t know how to), so I was just like che hakuuu, telling a twelve year old how horny i was. Found out about three days later and understood their response: they laughed, as usual. There are tongue twisters in guarani, tribalenguas, speaking of laughing. One goes ¨aguapy pykapuku ha apukapuku¨ which means i sat on the bench and laughed a long time. ¨aha aha ha ha´a¨ i go to leave and I fall. I´m going to kick it up a notch for this leccion´i. For basics there´s a post from about a year ago with what i was learning as a trainee. So, most people are like guarani is a simple indiginous language, how can it convey meaning like english? It does. Oikopaite. For starters they have the two we´s jaguapy is we all sit, roguapy is we sit, but fulano can´t and when you use the exclusive you generally gesture to include the people. In english we have the same word when for siz different meanings:

when i did that
when i did that a long time ago
when i do that
when i will do that
when did you do that?
when is the game?

ajapokuri
ajapova´ekue
ajapojave
ajapovove
araka´epiko/pio/pa (those three if you hear them they signify a question, but pa is also like an empasizer as well and they are 100% interchangable. One of the only distinctions is piko can stand alone. Fulano goes, ¨man, the corn is germinating like a crazy¨ and his buddy goes ¨piko?¨) rejapora´e - araka´e ndepiko/pio/pa rejapora´e - araka´e nde rejapopiko/pio/pa
y finalmente
mba´epa/piko/pio hora/día/semana/ lo partido

Guarani is funny. Its all abrupt syllables and nasal vowels. But it builds itself, and you can break it down and compartmentalize the different ¨particles¨. Going through a pack of menthols last night helped with the breakdown as well. G is structured such that you stack the particles on to the back of the word usually, but sometimes in front.

oke is he sleeps
okese he want to sleep
okesema he already wants to sleep
okesemapiko does he already want to sleep
but okë means door
kookë is this door upeokë is that door
and oike means he enters
oiko means literally to live like maintain homestasis, but also live as in dwell, and to function
doikoi means it doesn´t work
doikoimo´ai means it won´t work
oikoramö and oikorö both mean if it works.


so now it gets interesting
dawn in G is ko´ë. If you greet someone before like 7 you say mba´eichapa ne ko´ë ? literally how did you dawn, not wake up (wake up is pu´a. The state called itapua is called that because in that section of the rio parana there´s a big island, and ita is the word for rock and pu´a means more to rise so the state is called like risen rock)

but then tomorrow is ko´erö. Which means literally ¨if the dawn¨. so now it gets good

upe before a word means that. upetatu means that armadillo
upea means that one (and paraguayans have the bad habit of calling people ¨that¨ which took getting used to)
upeaicha means like that because you tack icha onto words to say like. So you´d say this in a really excited way with your voice modulating and you´re just singing and you go ¨eh! hakuiterei che ra. Che amanota. ugh nde japu, chente amanota. Ñaikotevë petei cerveza jaguatïicha¨ and that last bit you´re asking for a beer like a dogs nose.

and lastly upeicharö means ¨if like that¨ a little how we would use ¨well then¨ or ¨entonces¨ in spanish or ¨entaö¨ no portugues

alright, only three more things. the particles mbo/mo (depends on whether the word its attached to is nasal or oral [G has a 33 letter alphabet, nasel vowels (y included) and a nasal g. Have fun with that.) uka and ve.

Ve kind of signifies more. Hakuve kopyhareve (that ve means nothing). Kuehe pyhare ho´ysa

but that means its hotter this morning. last night was chilly. ou means he or she comes. and douvei means he or she doesn´t come around anymore. nome´evei shes not giving any more...you hear the muchachos using that a lot.
but then ve has a really interesting meaning.
The interrogatives in guarani are
who
what
where
when
how

mava
mba´e (which also means thing)
moo
araka´e
mba´eicha


but then to say the following

nobody
nothing
nowhere
never

you say

mavave
mba´eve
moove
araka´eve

in my unqualified opinion its kind of like when you´re asking a question you´re by definition lacking something. Its like who and more who for nobody.

but then there´s two other really intersting uses
gui and guive
and
pe and peve

gui and pe means from and to respectively
but guive and peve mean since and until. So its like more to the final destination. The G is awesome. It starts to unravel like this. But after half a year of listening all day everyday.

ha iporä

mbo and mo come before the word. And they modify a word such that the noun is making the word modified by mbo or mo i don´t know how to explain it. But mira. chyryry means fried. But ambochyryry means i fry. You impose one word on the other kind of. potï means clean and amopotï means i clean / i make clean
and you can make funny words with that. nañembyatymo´ai means I won´t join. Nachemombyry´ai´mo´ai means it won´t make me warm. nañañemongetamo´ai
means we (inclusive) won´t talk about it (-mo´ai signifies a future that won´t occur) but here the trick where ro´u becomes eat me. IF you say ore ro´u you´re saying we (exclusive) eat. But if you say che ro´u you´re saying i eat you. Which makes sense when you think about it, because the ro (unlike the rö for if) signifies an accion between 2, 3 people, but a paraguayan would say roganapaite la guerra del chaco ¨we really won the chaco war¨ kind of like they´re excluding the bolivians in absencia.

The intersting part about the mbo and mo is there hidden role. akaru means i lunch. but amongaru means i make another lunch (to feed, alimentar). just e is the infinitive for speak and ambo´e means teach (i make speak). ajapo means i make or do and amba´apo means i work (i make do).

Uka is attached to the end of words and means to make someone do something for something or someone, kind of. ahecha means i see and ahechauka means i show (i make see). Its weird because they seem similar, but aren´t.

Just two other cositas ou coisinhas. They sing when they talk. opurahe´i means he sings. osapoca´i means he shouts and he´i means he says. But its wild. My voice has changed as a result. I can talk really high pitched when i´m chirping. Three things i guess. Another thing is about a third of the time, you´re not even speaking a language. Like when we talk about the yerba moving you just say like mbop mbop mbop, I occasionally pull out beep bop boop you´re fired too. And then the last is the learning process. One anecdote will claraficar todo. there´s three different ways to conjugate verbs and I asked my neighbor ¨antonio, which of the three types of verbs is this? and he just looks at me and goes ¨andres, whats a verb?¨ so yes. Its fun though. I try and learn two or three palabras por dia. Stupid stuff too, like the names of the different types of grass. You can be sure that if something is annoying or has a use they have a name in guarani, which is impressive given its rather turbulent history. Kapi´i atï and kapi´i una have seeds that are awful. But kapi´i pororo they pick and bundle up and make torches for the festival de san juan. I´m spent. I didn´t just burn through a pack at my site though, i´m still in transit back. But safely with a volunteer along the way. She´s leaving in a few weeks and is from my sister G, so I wanted to get pictures for her of her site at sunrise and I was up at 3 anyway i figured almost there, just go for it. And now its time for my siesta. After a few photos. Later