Guerra
  • Werner Hernández, November 17, 2008 at 7:44pm

Álvaro, al oir a los hablantes sobre los años 80's noté que "guerra" no tiene una palabra y la describen en la acción "Cuando pelean". Así, el uso es "Kwak musumat".

  • November 16, 2010 at 4:43pm ~ Jose Velasquez

VALE! Quiero hablar sobre palabras de guerra!
""Steal" is -ichteki (with an indefinite object, techteki [i.e. ta- + -ichteki]). "Kill" is -miktia (and tamiktia)"
I REALLY wanna know a LOT of WAR related words :D Including Sacrfice (Sacrifice was abolished in Cuzcatlan but I think there should still be a word). Words like rape, murder, torture, cut, bleed, die, pillage, save, shoot, attack, honor, etc! :D I hope in future lessons will discuss talk about these bad things as well as curse words like f, s*, b*, c*, a**, etc! :D

January 25 at 6:59pm ~ Alan R King
Die: miki
save: -palewia
bleed: eskisa
wound: -tzunteki or -shuta
decapitate: -kechkutuna…
shoot: -muta

We can probably find some other terms for ways of killing or wounding, using Nawat's compounding resources, I just haven't got the time to make a thorough study right now. For "murder" use the word for "kill". I doubt you'll find specific terms equivalent to "rape", "torture", "pillage" or "honor", they're a bit more (western) culture-specific than you imagine.

However, you're wrong to assume so confidently that Nawat will conserve a specialized war vocabulary. I don't doubt that it had it at one time, but too long has passed since then, and things get forgotten. How much do you know about the world your great-grandparents lived in, and the terminology associated with the technology or material culture of their time? Maybe nothing - and that was only one century ago, not five! And consider the Angles and the Saxons, the first speakers of the English language. They were also colonized and subjugated - by the Normans. The official language was French after that and only the peasants carried on speaking English; there was no longer an English-speaking nobility or ruling class, and French or Latin were the languages of administration, government, church, schools, writing and all "higher" pursuits. After several centuries things changed and once again English became the language of these things - and has continued to this day. But nobody remembered the old words for those complex things any more. They actually had to borrow the French words - which is why English today has so much French in it. So don't be so surprised that the Pipils don't remember the old words for "pillage" or "honor" - IF they ever had them.

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