Call me irresistible…
When you venture outside the confines of a mother tongue, you have to accept, even embrace uncertainty.
An article by Mark Abley, in the latest issue of Brick magazine on the Boro language (excerpted here and in the latest Harper’s), that serves as a lyrical argument against the homogenisation of culture.
How could anyone resist a language whose expression for “slightly humpbacked” is gobdobdob?
Spoken by several hundred thousand people in North-East Asia, its inner workings and those of its kin revealed by Dr. Bhattacharya et. al.
A partial lexicon:
asusu: to feel unknown and uneasy in a new place
bokhali: a woman who carries a child on her back
gansuthi: the first grown feather of a bird’s wing
gobran: to shout in one’s sleep
gobray: to fall in a well unknowingly
khale: to feel partly bitter
khanti: to be wounded without bleeding
khar: to smell like urine or raw fish
khonsay: to pick up an object with care, as it is rare or scarce
mokhrob: to express anger by a sidelong glance
onsay: to pretend to love
zogno: the sound produced by a mixing of mud and water if you thrust your hand into a crab’s hole
Boro! Boro!
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