Toúījāb Kīkxot - Hard mode
Ōmūfakh vit ayyōp phophalgīí ūkītos ūmpa mōnak gaxitpa
[oːmuːħǝk' ʕɪ θǝhoː p'ɔp'ǝlgiː juːxiːθɔ suːmpǝ moːnǝ gːǝʃɪtpǝ]
<ōCūCaC>.MFKh vit <aCCōC>.YYP ~<oCCīC>.Ph<al>GÍ ūkītos ūmpa mōnak <CiCCa>.G<ax>TP
<AGN.IV>apostasy REL <INTRS.II>.night HAB~<TRNS.II><AGEN>.see two.times CONJ.SS NEG <TRNS.IV><PSS>.blessing
"A silent apostate sees twice and isn't rewarded"
First to explain the proverb. I took the original one to mean that
you should focus on one thing at a time lest you complete neither. Well,
I admit I twisted that a bit to fit better with Kikxotian society. The
essential cultural (and linguistic) details are as follows:
Kikxotian religion is centered on worship of Kikxo.
Kīkxo [kiːkʃɔ] is the great protector and anyone who serves him will be protected from evil. The opposite of Kikxo is
Khluzā
[k'lʊtʃaː] "The Envious One" (or one of his many other names). Khluza
is jealous of Kikxo and wants to destroy everything Kikxo has out of
spite. Kikxo is more than powerful enough to protect his followers but
this is costly and he won't protect someone who doesn't appreciate it.
Khluza doesn't protect his followers (why would they need protection? He
is the source of evil) but he does "reward" them in this life with the
things he has power over. He gives no protection in the afterlife
though.
There are many types of followers of Khluza. The word used here
literally means apostate, as in someone who rejects Kikxo. Apostates
are a type of
ōmūkaqzō [oːmuːxǝq'tʃoː], "demon person, follower of Khluza" (the other two main groups there are heretics (
ōqūúab [oːq'uːwǝb]), and blasphemers (
ōbūvaj [oːvuːʕǝdz])).
Ayyōp
literally means "to move silently" and has specific reference to night
and shadows, which are seen as evil times. In this phrasing, it
basically means crypto-, so the final phrase could be translated as
"crypto-apostate". While a crypto-apostate's heart might be in the right
place (well wrong place but you get what I mean), just silently
rejecting Kikxo is not sufficient for Khluza to reward you, since you
aren't really undermining anything with your action. It's like
slacktivism, but worse.
Ophgīí is a transitive verb. There's no object but it is implied. Since
ōmūfakh refers to a human, the phrase should use
pihma
[pɪʔmǝ]. Using the word which refers to the things an animal sees is a
derisive remark, though fitting with the rest of the proverb. The lack
of
zō at the end of
ōmūfakh makes this even more degrading. Here, the phrasing can basically be interpreted as "someone who is looking in two directions".
Putting all these together, the phrasing basically means "someone who
half asses two things gets nothing", which I think gets close enough to
the original proverb. Though you could also interpret it as "If you're
gonna be bad, be evil" which is not a very wholesome proverb at all.
Now for the questions. Animals are specifically the domain of two (of
the four) "clans" in the broader food-producer caste. The herders (
wyīúu [ɹiːwʊ] are in charge of taking care of domestic animals, while the hunters (
rxību [rǝʃiːvʊ]) deal with wild animals and animal processing. Small scale farmers often have animals like oxen (
cōmum [tsoːmʊm]) and horses (
kōduh [koːðʊʔ]) that they keep themselves. It's not uncommon to keep ferrets (
sōtum [soːθʊm]) or cats (
zhōluq [tʃ'oːlʊq']) as mousers. Dogs (
rōxub
[roːʃʊb]) are also fairly common in rural settings among all groups of
people. Otherwise, people outside of those clans don't interact with
animals much.
Some animals are quite respected in the culture. Of special note are the bear (
gōduk [goːðʊk]), sheep (
kōkub [koːxʊb]), and honeybee (
dōsur
[doːsʊr]), each of which gives their name to one of the broader castes
(which can best be thought of as "nobles", "peasants" and "tradesmen"
respectively). Some animals like
yōyup [hoːhʊp] (flying night creatures, eg. owls and bats) and snakes (
wōluf [ɹoːlʊħ]) are feared. In the foothills, seeing a
kherū
[k'erʷ] ("a kind of eagle", this is a loan from a local language and is
given in the mountain dialect) is considered good luck. Similarly,
islanders are fond of parakeets (
raíīd [rǝjiːd], also a loan word given in dialect). In general, Kikxotians like seeing birds (
kōzur [koːtʃʊr])
and they don't consider owls to be birds.
As for nature, the Kikxotians aren't very environmentally conscious.
Forests are respected but the average person doesn't enter them, rivers
are polluted and marshes are deliberately filled in (marshes are
considered bad in their religion). In general, people stick to villages,
towns and cultivated fields unless their clan dictates otherwise. The
hunter clan is actually considered very suspicious because their duty
requires that they spend lots of time in the wilderness. That being
said, because of their dislike of the wilderness, Kikxotians are very
good and transforming land into something more palatable. This has the
double effect (seen as good in their eyes) of disrupting "traditional"
structures in their colonies (
ātufr [aːθʊħǝr]), making it easier to bring Kikxo's word to new, captive audiences.
While I'm here, I should probably mention the animal name patterns.
Basically, sometime between ~2500 years ago (when TbKt broke off from
its closest relatives to the west) and ~1500 years ago (when its first
literary tradition started), there was a massive shift in animal words.
Many animal words, including some of the most common ones, were replaced
with epithets. They were attached to various verbs and could basically
be translated as "the X one". For example,
rōxub is clearly related to
rxību, so whatever the old word for dog was, it got replaced with "the hunting one".
Other animal words kept their general form but were forced into the
new pattern (which was probably a bit more recent and in line with other
analogical levelings that occurred in the early literary era).
Kōduh
appears to be one of these nouns. Loanwords for animals followed this
pattern as well, being turned more or less into a root and then
converted to fit.
Shōbum [s'oːvʊm] "fish" seems to be a
case of this. As inland pastoralists, either didn't have a strong
connection to their original word for fish or they loaned one from the
original inhabitants of their land to refer to a certain type of fish
that then generalized to all fish.
After (or probably during) all this analogy, new verbs started to be
coined off the animals. As such, many of the verbs in this class are
quite specific and do provide reminders to all Kikxotians about animals,
even if they don't interact with them much.
