Wenja Language: lija

Posted on | By BylineWinjapati

Su shayar, salwa! Sa “Sushal-dajrim” Urusi ankamya warshtas dabu warshta krayba magam. Sa dajris warshta: lija. Alya kraybamansu sama lijaman hu-taticham.

Good morning, all!  This Sunday I can write a few words about an uncommon word in Oros. Today’s word of the day is: lija “play, flirt”. For fun, I’ve recorded some pick-up lines in another post.

To my knowledge, lija is a word that’s rarely used in the game. I’m certain that it’s not used in the main dialogue, as the only place that it could be found is in the following scene with Roshani (go to 13:29), but Roshani uses drama “run”, not lija.

However,  it is hidden in some of the many barks uttered by the villagers. You can use lija to mean either “play” or “flirt”. Both take -ha prepositional phrases, but whether it’s one or the other depends on the object of that prepositional phrase:

  1. Karwa shash-ha lija.  “The boy plays with a rock.”
  2. Karwa karwi-ha lija.  “The boy flirts with a girl.”
  3. Karwa karwi-ha samsam shash-ha lija.  “The boy plays with a rock with a girl.”
So to “play” you use an object; to “flirt” a person. You can see that to say “play with someone” (vs. flirt) you need to introduce samsam ‘together’.  
The word derives from PIE *leid- (actually lidye > lija), a word found in English ludi-crous, from Latin ludicrum ‘sport, game’, ludere ‘to play’. There’s also a rare Greek form lízei ‘plays’. The Wenja form is identical to the Greek one.

4 thoughts on “Wenja Language: lija”

  1. Reofive says:

    "Lija" makes me think more of the English word "leisure", especially in its pronunciation.

  2. Andrew Byrd says:

    Definitely sounds similar! Not related, though. "Leisure" is ultimately from Latin licere 'be permitted' (related to license) which doesn't seem to have any other Indo-European cognates.

  3. Reofive says:

    I see! By the way, speaking of Roshani, will there be posts on the Izila language too?

  4. Andrew Byrd says:

    That's the plan! We'll begin talking about Izila after we make our way through Wenja, likely towards the end of the summer.

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