Su shayar, salwa. Na shaja mi-janhasi su dajri — mi-chamyugi (@brennabyrd) & mi-sushnu (yiyi nashman Shlakanra Winja-ha) swarga. Na su hu-sasarsh. Nakway smaya.
Good morning, all. Today is not a good day for my family — my wife (@brennabyrd) & my son (whose name is Shlakanra in Wenja) are sick. They haven’t slept well. No fun (literally — “No one smiles”).
Fortunately they don’t have the kapalpur (skull fire) like the Udam. You learn more about this ailment from the Udam characters you meet in the world (Ull & Dah), and it’s something that the Udam have developed from many years of cannibalism. While we never find out what the kapalpur is in reality, it seems reasonable that this is some variant of Mad Cow’s disease.
The word for “sick” in Wenja is swarga, but we usually hear the noun meaning “sickness” instead swargati. Recall Ull’s final words: Udam swargati-bi mari. “The Udam die from sickness.”
The source of swarga is a word that is widely attested throughout Indo-European. The PIE root was *swergʰ- ‘to worry, be sick’, continued by Sanskrit surkṣati ‘cares for’, Lithuanian sergu ‘am sick’, Old Church Slavonic sraga, and Old Irish serg (both ‘sickness’). And in English? This is the source of our word sorrow.
Tu sakwan prasti!
Shlakanra? Is your son's name Alexander?
Shrash!