Smarkaka salwa! Pra samkway (@Eevy) Twitter-ha parcha: “Sakwamans sa mi-janha-dajri. Kwayshim Winja kurpashna santayta, pracham? Kwati janmanis Winja-ha warha?” Shaja, traya dajris warshta iti : janha, janhas, janman-kwa.
Hey everyone! Earlier someone (@Eevy) wrote on Twitter: “Next month it will be my birthday. Can you send me a bracelet Wenja please? How to talk of birth in Wenja?” For this reason today there will be three words : janha “to be born”, janhas “family, tribe, clan; community”, and janman “birth, lineage, descent”.
These words are of course related to each other. To use each word in a sentence: Palhu mansi pa janham. “I was born many moons ago.” Winja. Masi-hasar. Masi-janhas. “Wenja. Our blood. Our tribe.” (The first words of the game.) Nawashnas janman shlan-shlangwi. “The birth of the baby was a very easy one.”
The PIE root that these words were based on is found widely throughout the Indo-European languages. PIE *ǵenh₁- ‘to be born’, which is precisely Wenja janha. We see this root in English kin, Latin genus, and Greek génos, as well as various other words related to being born : genetics, primo-geniture, generous (originally meaning ‘of noble birth’), etc.
To return to Eevy’s request : how do you say “Happy birthday to you”? Su janha-dajri tiyi — literally, “good born-day to.you”. And if you were to do a Wenja birthday song?
Su janha-dajri tiyi
Su janha-dajri tiyi
Su janha-dajri kashyan Eevy-yi (add -yi if the name ends in a vowel; -i if a consonant)
Su janha-dajri tiyi
(Nu pal-palhur…)
Tu sakwan prasti!